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THE   FIELD   OF   ETHICS.     lamo,  #i.io,  net;  postage 
extra. 

THE  ODYSSEY  OF   HOMER.     Books  I.-XII.     The 
Text  and  an  English  Prose  Version.    8vo,  I2.50,  ntt, 

THE   ODYSSEY.     Complete.    An  English  Translation 
in  Prose.     Crown  8vo,  $1.50. 
Sittden/s'  Edition.    Crown  8vo,  f  t.oo,  tut. 

THE   ANTIGONE   OF  SOPHOCLES.    Translated  into 
English.    With  an  Introduction,     tamo,  75  cents. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 
Boston  and  Nbw  York. 


THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 


BEIKO^  THE 


FOR  1899 


GEORGE  HERBERT  PALMER 

ALFOKD  PROFESSOR  OF   PHILO80PHT 
IN  HABYABD  UNIVEKSITY 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

1901 


COPYRIGHT,   I90I,  BY  GEORGE   HERBERT   PALMER 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  November,  icfii 


Library 


CONTENTS 

LECTURE  I 

ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES 

PAGE 

I.  Plan  of  the  Course 3 

II.  Relation  of  Ethics  to  the  Physical  Sciences  .     .  6 

III.  Relation  of  Ethics  to  Philosophy 12 

IV.  Relation  of  Ethics  to  History 14 

v., VI.   The  double  meanings  of  Law  and  Cause  ...  16 

VII.   The  Normative  contrasted  with  the  Descriptive 

Sciences 24 

Vni.  Danger  of  confusing  the  two 29 

IX.  Scheme  of  the  Normative  Sciences 32 

X.   Summary 33 

References  on  the  Normative  character  of  Ethics  35 

LECTURE  n 

ETHICS   AND  THE  I4AW 

I.   Affinities  of  the  two 39 

II.  Hobbes  and  Bentham  tend  to  identify  them  .     .  41 

III.  But  what  is  immoral  is  not  always  illegal  ...  44 

rV.  Nor  what  is  illegal  immoral 46 

V.  Inadequate  attempts  at  distinction 49 

VI.    (1)  The  fixed  penalties  of  the  law 66 

Vn.   (2)  The  order  of  assigning  penalties      ....  59 

VIII.    (3)  The  precision  of  legal  obligation      ....  66 

IX.   (4)  Moral  development  not  the  aim  of  the  law  .  74 

X.  Though  welcomed  as  accessory 78 

XI.   The  objectivity  of  the  law 82 

XII.  Outer  and  inner  intention 84 

References  on  Law  and  Ethics 86 


IV  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  in 

ETHICS   AND  AESTHETICS 

1.  The  beautiful  and  the  good  generally  felt  to  be 

akin 89 

II.    Search  for  common  qualities 94 

III.  Analysis  of  the  Shaw  Monument 95 

IV.  Its  beauty  proportional  to  its  orgp.nic  whole- 

ness       99 

V.  A  similar  wholeness  found  in  the  holy  man  .     .  102 
YI.  But  moralists  have  often  been  suspicious  of 

beauty 106 

VII.   (1)  Because  of  the  isolation  of  the  beautiful 

object 108 

Vm.   (2)  Because  its  parts  may  be  worthless  or  even 

injurious 113 

IX.   (3)  Because  it  is  insusceptible  of  growth .     .     .  118 

X.   Yet  Ethics  owes  large  debts  to  Esthetics     .     .  121 
XI.   (1)  Borrowing  from  Esthetics  its  fundamental 

conception 122 

XII.   (2)  Through  it  becoming  reconciled  to  law  .     .  124 

XIII.  (3)  And  thus  enabled  to  fix  its  goal     ....  128 

XIV.  The  inadequacies  of  Ethics  compel  farther  ad- 

vance   130 

References  on  Art  and  Ethics 132 

LECTURE  IV 

ETHICS  AND  BELIGION  —  AnTNITIES 

I.   Question  of  origins  unimportant  for  our  pur- 
pose       135 

II.   Early  identification  of  Religion  and  Morality   .  139 
m.   Many  later  experts  have  identified  them  .     .     .  142 
IV.   Social  institutions  assume  their  close  connec- 
tion        146 


CONTENTS  V 

y.   To  test  the  connection,  examine  a  definition  of 

religion 148 

YI.  Lucretius's  saying  that  fear  begets  gods  .     .     .  149 

YII.   Fear  fundamental  in  morality  too 153 

VIII.   But  there  are  two  kinds  of  fear 155 

IX.   Illustrated  by  social  timidity 157 

X.   Noble  fear  has  love  in  it 161 

XI.   Religions  divide  according  to  their  kind  of  fear  163 

XII.   Moral  fears  are  also  reverential 166 

Xni.   Conclusion 168 

LECTURE  V 

ETHICS   AND  REU6IOK  —  DIVERGENCIES 

I.   The  dutiful  man  at  the  moment  of  duty  is  not 

always  religious 171 

H.   Nor  the  religious  man  always  dutiful  ....  175 
III.   Morality  emphasizes  the  finite,  Religion  the  in- 
finite element 177 

lY.   From  morality  to  religion  is  the  natural  order 

of  advance 182 

V.   Three  famous  definitions  of  religion    ....  187 
YI.   The  debts  owed  by  morality  to  religion  are  (1) 

horizon 193 

YII.    (2)  Stability 195 

Yni.   (3)  Hope 198 

References  on  Religion  and  Ethics      ....  202 

LECTURE  YI 

CONCLUSION 

I.   Ethics  is  nnsystematically  presented  in  common 

life  as  morality 205 

II.   Summary  exhibit  of  the  terms  descriptive  of  a 

moral  being 209 

III.   Resulting  definitions  of  Ethics 212 


THE  WILLIAM  BELDEN  NOBLE  LECTURES 

This  Lectureship  was  constituted  a  perpetual  foundation 
in  Harvard  University  in  1898,  as  a  memorial  to  the  late 
William  Belden  Noble  of  Washington,  D.  C.  (Harvard, 
1885).  The  deed  of  gift  provides  that  the  lectures  shall  be 
not  less  than  six  in  number,  that  they  shall  be  delivered 
annually,  and,  if  convenient,  in  the  Phillips  Brooks  House, 
during  the  season  of  Advent.  Each  lecturer  shall  have 
ample  notice  of  his  appointment,  and  the  publication  of  each 
course  of  lectures  is  required.  The  purpose  of  the  Lecture- 
ship will  be  further  seen  in  the  following  citation  from  the 
deed  of  gift  by  which  it  was  established  :  — 

"  The  object  of  the  founder  of  the  Lectures  is  to  continue 
the  mission  of  William  Belden  Noble,  whose  supreme  desire 
it  was  to  extend  the  influence  of  Jesus  as  the  way,  the  truth, 
and  the  life  ;  to  make  known  the  meaning  of  the  words  of 
Jesus,  *I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life,  and  that  they 
might  have  it  more  abundantly.'  In  accordance  with  the 
large  interpretation  of  the  Influence  of  Jesus  by  the  late 
Phillips  Brooks,  with  whose  religions  teaching  he  in  whose 
memory  the  Lectures  are  established  and  also  the  founder 
of  the  Lectures  were  in  deep  sympathy,  it  is  intended  that 
the  scope  of  the  Lectures  shall  be  as  wide  as  the  highest  in- 
terests of  humanity.  With  this  end  in  view,  —  the  perfection 
of  the  spiritual  man  and  the  consecration  by  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  of  every  department  of  human  character,  thought,  and 
activity,  —  the  Lectures  may  include  philosophy,  literature, 
art,  poetry,  the  natural  sciences,  political  economy,  sociology, 
ethics,  history  both  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  as  well  as  theology 
and  the  more  direct  interests  of  the  religious  life.  Beyond 
a  sympathy  with  the  purpose  of  the  Lectures,  as  thus  defined, 
BO  restriction  is  placed  upon  the  lecturer." 


I 

ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE 
SCIENCES 


THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 


ETHICS   AND   THE   DESCRIPTIVE   SCIENCES 


In  these  lectures  I  propose  to  ofFer  an  in- 
troduction to  ethics  of  a  somewhat  novel 
kind.  An  introduction  might  properly 
enough  sketch  in  outline  the  principal  doc- 
trines of  moral  science.  It  might  analyze  the 
working  of  the  will,  and  its  relation  to  per- 
ception and  the  cognitive  process.  It  might 
explore  the  origin  of  the  moral  sentiments ; 
or  might  attempt  to  determine  the  ultimate 
aim  by  which,  however  remotely,  conduct  is 
directed.  I  shall  adopt  none  of  these  wise 
methods,  but  shall  simply  try  to  fix  the  place 
of  ethics  in  a  rational  scheme  of  the  universe. 
I  wish  to  see  how  it  is  parted  ojff  from  neigh- 
boring provinces  of  knowledge,  and  what  kind 
of  being  he  must  be  who  is  the  object  of  its 


4  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

study.  Why  should  there  be  a  science  of 
ethics  at  all,  I  ask.  Is  it  an  invention  of 
scholars  ?  Or,  if  all  treatises  on  it  were  blotted 
out  to-day,  would  the  toiling  multitude  recon- 
struct them  to-morrow?  This  is  what  I  ask, 
and  the  answer  is  that  they  certainly  would. 
The  matters  with  which  ethics  is  concerned 
are  such  as  we  cannot  fail  to  meet  contin- 
ually. They  permeate  life.  They  affect  every 
occupation  in  which  man  engages.  They  con- 
sequently enter  into  many  sciences  besides 
ethics.  It  is  only  the  way  in  which  they  are 
surveyed  which  renders  them  ethical.  I  want 
to  show  how  necessary  this  ethical  way  is,  and 
how  distinct  from  every  other  mode  of  regard. 
My  plan  may,  accordingly,  be  stated  as  the 
demarcation  of  the  field  of  ethics  by  means 
of  a  series  of  graded  contrasts.  Assuming  for 
a  starting  point  the  generally  accredited 
notion  that  ethics  is  the  science  of  conduct 
and  character,  I  proceed  to  give  this  formal 
definition  significance,  by  first  showing  how 
it  separates  ethics  as  one  of  the  philosophi- 
cal sciences  from  the  great  supplemental 
group  of  the  physical  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  historical  on  the  other.  This  whole  group 
of  successively  eliminated  sciences  —  physics. 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES     5 

non-ethical  philosophy,  and  history  —  is  then 
seen  to  possess  characteristics  in  common 
which  bring  these  as  descriptive  sciences  into 
contrast  with  certain  others,  of  which  ethics  is 
one,  the  normative  sciences.  The  most  con- 
spicuous of  the  normative  sciences  is  the  law, 
from  which  ethics  can  be  detached  only  by 
throwing  it  over  in  the  direction  of  aesthetics. 
From  aesthetics  it  parts  by  affinities  with  reli- 
gion. But  to  show  how  it  still  remains  dis- 
tinct from  rehgion  is  a  work  of  such  delicacy 
that  I  have  thought  it  necessary,  and  fortu- 
nately also  harmonious  with  the  aims  of  this 
foundation,  to  give  to  religion  almost  a  third 
of  my  entire  space.  A  few  words  removing 
ethics  from  the  opinions  of  ordinary  life  close 
the  discussion. 

By  this  selected  series  of  discriminations, 
the  point  of  view  of  the  moral  sciences  be- 
comes progressively  fixed,  the  meaning  of  con- 
duct and  character  established,  and  the  field 
of  ethics  significantly  limited  in  relation  to  .^ 
provinces  more  and  more  nearly  adjacent. 
These  provinces  themselves,  however,  claim 
but  a  subordinate  attention.  They  are  con- 
sidered, not  for  their  own  sakes,  but  only  in 
order  that  by  way  of  contrast  they  may  con- 


\ 


6  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

tribute  something  to  our  knowledge  of  ethics. 
The  exposition  of  them  will  therefore  be  inten- 
tionally meagre  and  inadequate.  I  summon 
them  simply  to  show  wherein  they  are  unlike 
ethics.  By  their  repeated  exhibits  of  what  eth- 
ics is  not,  I  hope  they  may  also  disclose  what  it 
is,  and  that  thus  their  account  of  themselves 
may  prove  to  be  a  negative,  limitative,  and  in- 
structive account  of  the  nature  of  ethics  itself. 

n 

To  begin,  then,  the  long  inquiry.  When 
we  attempt  to  break  up  this  vast  and  various 
universe  and  to  split  it  into  parts  capable  of 
being  described  in  relatively  integral  sciences,  it 
is  not  at  once  easy  to  see  what  hue  of  cleavage 
to  adopt.  Things,  it  is  true,  are  but  combina- 
tions of  qualities,  and  of  no  very  great  num- 
ber of  qualities  either.  Any  one  of  these  — 
hot,  hard,  Hving,  moving  —  may  be  selected, 
set  off  in  contrast  with  its  opposite,  and  in- 
stantly the  entire  multitudinous  world  falls 
into  two  neatly  exclusive  classes,  in  one  or  the 
other  of  which  everything  conceivable  will  be 
found.  Whatever  exists  is  either  hot  or  not 
hot,  living  or  not  living,  hard  or  not  hard, 
and  so  on,  no  matter  what  pair  of  adjectives 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES     7 

we  may  arbitrarily  choose.  Yet  a  division  by 
such  marks  is  rather  formal  than  real.  The 
negative  member  is  but  slightly  informatory. 
We  need  to  find  a  basis  o£  division  more 
fundamentally  significant,  if  it  is  to  prove 
fruitful  for  disclosing  valuable  distinctions. 
Such  a  basis  every  age  has  found  in  the  in- 
conspicuous fact  of  consciousness.  The  pri- 
mary division  of  the  sciences  has  always  been 
into  physics  and  philosophy,  the  physical 
sciences  being  those  which  deal  with  the-un- 
conscious  world,  the  philosophical  with  the 
conscious.  Small  and  elusive  as  this  mark  of 
distinction  may  at  first  appear,  it  is  the  one 
from  which  all  other  discriminations  are  ulti- 
mately derived. 

This  fact  makes  a  definition  of  conscious- 
ness itself  desirable  and  impossible.  If  con- 
sciousness could  be  analyzed  into  anything 
else,  then  that  something  else  would  become 
our  ultimate  canon  of  division,  and  conscious- 
ness would  fall  back  into  a  subordinate  afPair. 
But  though,  being  an  elementary  experience, 
it  cannot  be  disintegrated  and  defined,  con- 
sciousness can  be  clearly  illustrated,  we  may 
easily  fix  our  attention  on  it,  and  see  how  un- 
like it  is  to  everything  else. 


8  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

When  I  hold  a  pencil  before  my  eye,  I  am 
in  a  condition  different  from  that  in  which  I 
was  a  moment  j^before.  A  sensuous  impres- 
sion has  been  received,  a  mental  modification 
experienced.  Again,  I  hold  the  pencil  before 
a  mirror,  and  a  change  is  wrought  in  it  also. 
Just  as  the  rays  of  hght  fell  on  the  pupil  of 
my  eye,  so  do  they  fall  on  the  mirror's  sur- 
face, inducing  in  it  too  a  slight  modification. 
Is  there  any  difference  in  the  two  effects? 
Not  in  that  which  at  first  seems  to  discrimi- 
nate them,  their  continuance.  The  mirror 
may  at  least  be  conceived  to  have  a  kind  of 
memory  like  the  eye,  and  for  a  brief  instant 
after  the  disappearance  of  the  cause  to  retain 
whatever  effects  have  been  induced.  But 
granting  similarity  both  in  the  original  pic- 
tures and  in  their  continuance,  there  is  still 
an  enormously  important  difference :  I,  the 
possessor  of  the  pupil,  am  aware  of  the  pen- 
cil, and  apparently  the  mirror  is  not.  I  have 
consciousness,  awaredness,  which  the  mirror 
lacks.  Now  certain  sciences  deal  with  the 
facts,  the  laws,  and  the  impHcations  of  such  a 
consciousness.  Others  deal  with  unconscious 
objects.  The  former  are  the  philosophical, 
the  latter  the  physical  science.     These  two  re- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES     9 

present  the  broadest  possible  cleavage  among 
things. 

Nor  would  this  distinction  be  set  aside  if 
we  should  confess  that  we  cannot  prove  any 
objects  to  be  wholly  unconscious.  We  can- 
not indeed.  It  may  be  that  the  sensitive 
plant,  when  closing  its  leaf,  is  aware  of  what 
it  is  doing.  It  may  be  that  all  nature  has  as 
true  a  soul  as  we,  and  that  each  smallest  phy- 
sical change  is  attended  by  its  Httle  mental 
modification.  But  science  concerns  itself  with 
what  is  accessible  to  proof,  not  with  what 
may  possibly  be  true.  Certain  phases  of  the 
imiverse  cannot  be  understood  except  as  mani- 
festations of  consciousness.  Other  portions 
give  no  sure  sign  of  consciousness.  Their 
changes  are  explainable  on  different  grounds. 
Admitting,  therefore,  only  what  we  are  com- 
pelled to  admit,  we  classify  these  other  facts, 
laws,  and  implications  as  unconscious  phe- 
nomena, and  take  them  for  the  subjects  of 
the  physical  sciences. 

Nor  again  would  the  distinction  be  ren- 
dered unimportant  if  it  could  be  shown  that 
the  matters  considered  in  the  two  groups  of 
sciences  are  never  found  in  independent  isola- 
tion.-   Grant  that  all  mental  or  conscious  phe- 


10  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

nomfena  are  known  to  us  only  in  connection 
with  physical  or  unconscious  changes  ;  grant 
■what  has  sometimes  been  alleged,  that  phy- 
sical facts  cannot  exist  without  a  substratum 
of  mind ;  even  then,  though  the  two  orders 
of  fact  were  not  parted,  they  might  be  dis- 
criminated. We  should  still,  in  the  physical 
sciences,  study  the  unconscious  aspects  of 
facts  whose  conscious  aspects  are  at  the 
same  time  undergoing  philosophical  inspec- 
tion. Inseparable  and  supplemental  but  still 
contrasted,  philosophy  and  physics  would 
both  be  needed.  In  so  far  as  an  object  is 
conscious,  we  study  it  philosophically ;  in  so 
far  as  unconscious,  physically.  The  dualism 
of  mind  and  matter  cannot  cease  to  occupy 
our  thoughts  even  when  the  two  have  come 
to  be  regarded  as  elements  having  a  perpetual 
mutual  reference. 

In  which,  then,  of  these  great  provinces 
lies  the  field  of  ethics  ?  In  that  of  philoso- 
phy, of  course.  Conduct  and  character,  whose 
laws  are  traced  in  ethics,  differ  from  matter 
and  motion,  with  which  the  physical  sciences 
are  concerned,  precisely  in  this,  that  they  are 
exclusively  conscious  phenomena.  Matter  and 
motion  maybe  the  objects  of  consciousness,  but 


ETHICS  AND   THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  11 

they  do  not  seem  to  be  constituted  by  it.  The 
chemical  changes  going  on  in  me  during  any 
given  hour  may  be  as  important  to  my  well- 
being  as  my  business  plans;  but  not  until, 
like  those  plans,  they  become  expressive  of 
conscious  adjustments  do  they  enter  the  moral 
reahn.  If  it  were  true  that  man  could  not  by 
taking  thought  add  anything  to  his  stature, 
the  facts  of  human  growth  would  lose  all 
moral  significance,  and  become,  like  the  sup- 
posedly unconscious  motions  of  the  planets, 
affairs  of  physical  science.  Ethics  is  con- 
cerned with  the  known  and  the  steerable,  not 
with  that  which  moves  on  its  own  blind  way. 
It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  conscious 
always  reposes  on  an  unconscious  basis,  that 
moral  facts  presuppose  physical  facts,  that  no 
exact  line  can  be  drawn  where  unconscious- 
ness ceases  and  consciousness  begins.  It  is 
true  that  in  a  long  train  of  human  perform- 
ance only  a  few  spots  are  illuminated  by  con- 
sciousness, the  greater  part  of  the  train  lying 
as  truly  in  the  dark  and  outside  the  perform- 
er's cognizance  as  does  his  weight  or  the 
associative  processes  of  his  memory.  But 
these  important  facts  merely  show  not  that 
ethics  is  not  a  science,  but  that  it  is  not  a 


12  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

self-sufficient  science.  It  rests  upon  physics, 
yet  is  not  identified  with  physics.  Our  world, 
as  everybody  knows,  is  one.  Any  single  as- 
pect of  it  is  always  incomplete.  Its  manifold 
sciences  have  a  mutual  interdependence,  each 
representing  only  a  special  point  of  view  from 
which  the  common  material  may  be  surveyed. 
The  point  of  view  of  ethics,  as  of  philosophy 
in  general,  is  that  of  consciousness  or  internal 
cognizability.  The  point  of  view  of  physics 
is  the  acceptance  of  conditions  which  are 
assumed  not  to  require  consciousness  as  the 
ground  of  their  existence. 

in 
Ethics  is  thus  by  means  of  consciousness 
separated  from  the  physical  sciences  ^and-in- 
cluded  in  the  general  field  of  philosophy. 
But  this  field,  too,  has  many  divisions  —  psy- 
chology, logic,  epistemology,  metaphysics. 
Which  of  them  gives  an  account  of  conduct 
and  character  ?  None  of  them.  Conceivably 
a  being  might  have  been  created  fully  en- 
dowed with  consciousness  but  altogether  con- 
templative and  incapable  of  action.  He  might 
be  aware  of  everything  that  happens  without 
and  within,  yet  over  these  clearly  observed 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  13 

transactions  exercise  no  control.     A  psycho-   l^ 
logical  being   of  this   sort  would  not  be  a    ^ 
moral  one.     He  would  sit  as  an  idle  specta- 
tor at  his  own  drama.    Something  of  this  sort 
we  actually  find  in  day-dreaming,  in  involun- 
tary memory,  in  the  multitude  of  sensuous 
experiences  which  come  without  our  bidding. 
If  these  made  up  the  whole  of  human  life, 
ethics  would  never  have  been  heard  of.    But 
occasionally   consciousness   reacts    upon   the 
matters  of  which  it  is  aware.     They  change  \     j, 
under  its  influence.     It  becomes  a  factor  in/      „^ 
producing  and  guiding  them.     Hence  arises 
the  need  of  a  science  which  shall  explore  the 
laws  of  this  factorial  reaction.  '  T 

This  is  the  task  of  ethics,  to  analyze  con- 
sciously directed  conduct.    Each  of  the  many 
philosophical  sciences  examines  some  special 
phase  of  the  common  consciousness.     Meta-      v- 
physics  studies  its  nature  and  the  truths  which 
are  involved  in  its  very  existence;   psycho-     X^' 
logy,  the  facts  through  which  from  instant  to 
instant  conscious  being  manifests  itself  j  epis- 
temology,  the  extent  and  validity  of  the  know- 
ledge which  consciousness  affords  ;  logic,  the     -^-  '- 
processes  by  which  that   knowledge    comes. 
But  the  field  of  ethics  is  different  from  all      if 


14  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

these.     It  does  not  ask,  with  metaphysics, 
'*  What  am  I,  and  under  what  conditions  can  I 
be  ?  "     Nor  with  the  other  philosophical  sci- 
ences, "  What  and  how  do  I  know  ?  "    It  has 
/'  its  own  question,  "  What  and  how  can  I  do  ?  " 
\  All  its  discussions  assume  a  being  who  counts 
/  as  a  causative  factor  in  fashioning  conduct. 
;  And  this  conduct  is  regarded  as  unlike  other 
/   motions  in  that  it  is  expressive  of  human  pur- 

\  pose. 

IV 

But  if  through  consciousness  we  are  able 
to  separate  ethics  from  physics,  and  through 
its  active  character  from  all  the  other  philo- 
sophical sciences,  will  not  ethics  become  a 
branch  of  history  ?  History  is  the  record  of 
conduct  and  character.  It  studies  how  men 
have  behaved.  It  investigates  their  charac- 
ters, analyzes  their  motives,  and  shows  under 
what  circumstances  a  given  course  of  conduct 
is  likely  to  arise.  Ethics  does  the  same.  His- 
tory has  accordingly  profoundly  influenced 
ethical  theory,  particularly  in  our  time.  The 
grounds  of  obligation,  the  nature  of  con- 
science, the  compulsive  force  of  institutions, 
the  organization  of  society  and  its  influence 
in  gradually  controlling  the  selfish  impulses 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  16 

by  the  individual,  have  been  traced  by  the 
historical  method,  as  never  before,  into  the 
dark  backward  abysm  of  time.  To  know 
the  origin  of  morality  has  been  felt  to  be  the 
one  sure  mode  of  knowing  morality  itself,  and 
to  discover  the  ways  in  which  men  have  be- 
haved to  be  our  chief  justification  for  formu- 
lating laws  of  how  they  ought  to  behave. 

With  these  hopes  of  an  historical  recon- 
struction of  ethics  I  can  only  partially  sym- 
pathize. For,  closely  allied  with  history  as 
ethics  undoubtedly  is,  its  point  of  view  is  still 
conspicuously  different.  Primarily  ethics  tries 
to  survey  a  deed  in  its  rise  and  genesis,  be- 
fore it  is  committed  to  existence ;  history, 
after  the  deed  has  become  a  part  of  the 
world's  order.  Or  if  as  a  secondary  matter 
the  moralist  sometimes  reflectively  looks  back 
upon  deeds  already  performed,  he  does  so  ^ 
with  thoughts  of  praise  and  censure,  regard- 
ing  what  has  happened  as  an  event  by  no 
means  inevitable,  and  feeling  called  on  to  de- 
cide whether  some  one  of  many  other  possible 
results  might  not  have  been  preferable.  He 
contemplates,  in  short,  a  world  unfixed  and 
adjustable.  He  considers  every  deed  as  in 
some  sense  free,  and  imagines   that  a  chief 


16  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

influence  in  bringing  it  about  was  a  doer's 
choice.  To  the  historian,  on  the  other  hand, 
looking  at  events  from  a  point  of  view  after 
their  occurrence,  considerations  of  choice, 
freedom,  preference,  and  alternaitive  possibil- 
ity, are  unsuitable.  Schoolboys  occasionally 
discuss  what  the  condition  of  England  would 
now  be  if  William  the  Conqueror  had  been 
defeated  at  Hastings.  But  to  a  historian  such 
discussions  are  idle.  Facts  are  settled  things, 
those  of  humanity  like  those  of  the  physical 
world  being  of  interest  only  because  it  is 
possible  to  trace  their  firm  connections  with 
others  which  preceded  and  followed.  The  pos- 
sibility that  something  else  might  have  arisen, 
a  possibiHty  which  is  at  the  very  heart  of  eth- 
ics, history  discards.  Where  this  has  dropped 
out,  there  is  no  morality.  If  man's  saddest 
words  are  "it  might  have  been,"  they  an- 
nounce also  his  highest  glory.  Only  where 
tongue  or  pen  can  utter  these  does  a  moral 
situation  arise. 

V 

But  having  now  seen  how  ethics^  judges  a 
human  being  so  far  as  he  is  conscious,  active, 
and  free,  and  having  thus  successively  nar- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  17 

rowed  our  field  by  the  exclusion  of  physics, 
psyfijiplpgy,  and  History,  we  bring,  a  new  set 
of  distinctions  into  view.  For  the  three  ex- 
cluded sciences  show  a  certain  similarity  of 
procedure,  and  by  that  similarity  are  con- 
trasted with  the  methods  of  ethics.  This 
fresh  contrast,  generated  by  the  preceding 
three,  is  so  widely  and  deeply  significant  that 
it  cannot  be  stated  as  briefly  as  they,  but  will 
require  for  its  explanation  the  remainder  of 
this  lecture. 

By  a  science,  we  mean  such  an  organized 
body  of  facts  and  laws  that  each  of  them 
has  a  bearing  and  influence  on  all  the  rest. 
Of  course,  few  or  no  sciences  have  reached 
this  completeness.  The  conception  represents 
merely  the  goal  toward  which  all  tend.  The 
ideal  is  that  a  group  of  facts  and  laws  stall 
be  so  exactly  determined  in  their  interlocking 
relationships  that  a  change  in  oujr  knowledge 
oF  one  would  induce  a  change  in  what  we 
must  believe  about  all.  Such  an  ideal  is  as 
applicable  to  ethics  as  to  the  other  sciences. 
No  less  than  they,  it  studies  the  linkage  of 
phenomena  and  modifies  the  meaning  of  any 
supposed  law  in  order  to  bring  it  into  adjust- 
ment with  what  in  some  other  part  of  its  field 


18  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

is  found  to  be  law.  Let  any  moralist  change 
his  opinion  ever  so  slightly  about  the  facts  of 
human  freedom,  and  there  will  come  a  corre- 
sponding change  in  his  thoughts  of  obligation, 
of  conscience,  of  human  society,  and  of  good- 
ness itself. 

But  among  the  sciences,  all  alike  organized 
by  this  common  ideal  of  systematizing  law, 
special  groupings  arise  according  to  the  mean- 
ings which  they  severally  attach  to  law.  Most 
simply, the  word  signifies  a  sequence  of  events: 
e.  g.,  A,  B,  C,  and  D  appear  together  and 
always  in  a  certain  order.  Were  not  laws  of 
this  sort  possible,  foresight  would  be  cut  off. 
If  we  were  ignorant  of  regularity  in  events, 
when  one  occurred  how  could  we  guess  what 
would  happen  next  ?  Butjwe  are  not  so  ig- 
norant. To  a  good  degree  life  is  intelligible, 
and  is  being  made  more  so  by  each  year's 
r  discoveries.  The  dullest  person  on  seeing  the 
J  sun  set  expects  it  to  rise  the  next  morning, 
'  and  the  work  of  the  highest  science  is  merely 
the  increase  and  verification  of  similar  expec- 
tancies. The  later  stages  of  any  sequence  are 
thought  of  as  effects  of  the  earlier,  and  we 
sometimes  even  figure  a  force  as  passed  along 
from  one  to  the  other.     B  is  represented  as 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  19 

having  not  only  its  own  motion,  but  a  motion 
which  it  partly  derives  from  its  predecessor 
A ;  C,  a  motion  partly  derived  from  B ;  and 
D,  a  motion  partly  derived  from  C.  The  total 
series  is  so  largely  due  to  that  which  first 
occurred  that  we  are  able  to  say  it  is  all  a 
manifestation  of  one  single  original  force. 

Under  the  guidance  of  this  conception  of 
law,  philosophy  too  may  be  studied.  Mental 
states  no  less  than  physical  may  be  thought 
of  as  coming  together  in  groups  or  succes- 
sive trains,  each  new  idea  induced  by  those 
which  have  already  appeared.  Occurrences 
of  the  mind  may  be  regarded  as  under  the 
same  sort  of  law  as  obtains  in  the  outer 
world,  and  we  may  apply  to  the  study  of  them 
the  same  observational  methods  as  give  us 
our  knowledge  of  the  succession  of  physical 
changes.  This  is  precisely  what  is  done  in 
psychology.  In  it  we  have  a  simple  chronicle 
of  the  facts  of  mind.  Regularities  observed 
among  our  strange  inner  happenings  are  re- 
corded as  psychological  laws.  Such  laws  are 
mere  announcements  of  the  time-order  in 
which  certain  facts  have  repeatedly  presented 
themselves.  They  describe  the  sequences  of 
our  mental  modifications  without  looking  for 


20  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

farther  cause  than  the  existence  of  the  se- 
quence itself.  Laws  of  this  character  may  be 
called  descriptive  laws,  and  the  sciences  built 
upon  them  are  the  descriptive  sciences.  Such 
are  the  physical,  psychological,  and  historical 
sciences  already  considered.  They  all  alike 
describe  fixed  trains  of  fact,  and  may  indiffer- 
ently be  said  either  not  to  concern  themselves 
at  all  with  questions  of  causation  or  to  treat 
the  earHer  stages  of  any  given  sequence  as 
the  sufficient  cause  out  of  which  all  the  re- 
mainder flows. 

VI 

When,  however,  we  inspect  a  being  capa- 
ble of  conduct  and  character,  new  meanings 
gather  about  the  conceptions  of  event,  cause, 
and  law.  To  make  the  matter  clear,  let  us 
closely  examine  a  case  where  both  kinds  of 
causation  are  at  work.  Here  is  an  engine 
with  a  single  car  attached.  The  engine  runs 
along  its  track  and  the  car  follows.  What 
makes  the  car  follow  ?  The  engine,  we  say. 
The  engine,  generating  within  itself  a  force  of 
steam,  imparts  this  force  through  a  piston  to 
its  wheels ;  these  in  turn  send  it  on  to  the  link 
which  binds  car  and  engine  together,  from 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  21 

which  it  is  transmitted  by  means  of  car  trucks 
to  the  revolving  wheels  themselves.  Once 
operating  here,  the  whole  car  is  set  in  motion. 
The  causation  is  sequential.  Each  new  stage 
is  controlled  by  that  which  went  before.  Out 
of  the  motion  which  has  been,  comes  the  mo- 
tion which  at  any  instant  will  be. 

But  extend  the  illustration,  and  suppose  a 
man  running  after  the  car.  What  makes 
him  run  ?  Asking  what  made  the  car  run, 
we  said  it  was  the  engine.  When  we  now 
ask  what  makes  the  man  run,  shall  we  not 
say  it  is  the  car  ?  This  is  his  antecedent,  as 
the  engine  was  that  of  the  car.  But  the  car 
operates  causally  in  a  different  way  from  the 
engine.  Not  merely  is  its  influence  trans- 
mitted through  sight  and  mind,  instead  of 
through  links  and  pistons,  but  there  appear 
in  the  man  curious  imaginative  anticipations 
which  transform  the  influence  received  from 
the  car  into  an  altogether  novel  kind  of  cau- 
sation. The  car's  motion  is  induced  by  a 
fact ;  the  man's  by  a  depicted  possibility. 
For  what  made  the  car  run  was  a  state  of 
things  already  existing  in  the  engine.  The 
forces  there  had  to  be  in  actual  existence  be- 
fore the  car  would  move.     But  what  moved 


22  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

the  man  was  the  bare  possibiUty  of  being  on 
the  car.  As  a  fact  he  was  not  on  the  car. 
Had  he  been,  he  would  not  have  run. 

It  may  be  urged,  however,  that  a  fact  is 
still  necessary  to  start  the  motion ;  for  the 
imagined  picture  of  himself  on  the  car  is  itself 
a  fact  of  the  man's  mind.  But  while  this  is 
true,  it  is  unimportant.  That  picture  gets  all 
its  cogency  not  from  what  is  actual  in  it,  but 
from  that  in  it  which  is  as  yet  unrealized.  It 
would  therefore  be  untrue  to  say  that  the 
moving  is  caused  by  an  idea,  a  mental  fact.  It 
is  caused  by  an  ideal  which,  though  on  one 
side  of  itself  a  mental  fact,  draws  all  its  causa- 
tive power  from  the  mere  possibihties  depicted 
in  it.  So  soon  as  the  picture  in  the  man's 
mind  is  realized  and  he  finds  himself  actually 
seated  in  the  car,  he  is  quiet.  Reality  brings 
personal  causation  to  an  end.  But  it  is  reality, 
and  that  alone,  which  generates  mechanical 
causation.  This  absence  of  actuality  is  the 
point  on  which  we  need  to  fix  attention  if  we 
would  comprehend  moral  causation.  What- 
ever exists  is  always  insufficient  to  start  per- 
sonal action.  That  ideal  which  alone  directs 
the  whole  moral  process  is  always  anticipatory 
and  not  realized  until  the  conclusion  of  the  pro- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  23 

cess.  With  its  realization  the  process  ceases. 
We  may  accordingly  contrast  the  two  kinds 
o£  causation  neatly  enough  by  speaking  of 
one  as  causation  out  of  what  is,  the  other  out 
of  what  is  not ;  causation  out  of  the  past,  and 
out  of  the  future;  causation  out  of  reality, 
and  out  of  possibility. 

The  difference  between  these  two,  and  be- 
tween the  laws  which  express  them,  is  so 
momentous  that  I  am  inclined  to  coin  for 
them  two  technical  terms  which  may  precisely 
map  out  for  each  its  way  of  working.  That 
which  moves  from  reality  to  reality,  —  from 
actual  A  to  B,  then  from  actual  B  to  C,  then 
from  actual  C  to  D,  —  I  would  call  sequential 
causation.  But  that  which,  starting  with  pos- 
sible D,  summons  actual  A,  B,  and  C  to  coor- 
dinate themselves  accordingly,  I  would  caU 
anti-sequential  causation;  and  I  should  not 
much  care  whether  anti  were  spelled  with  a 
final  e  or  i.  Spelled  with  an  e,  it  would  de- 
clare how  all  personal,  moral,  purposive,  cau- 
sation comes  out  of  a  future.  Spelled  with  an 
if  it  would  show  that  by  doing  so  it  com- 
pletely reverses  the  order  of  physical,  me- 
chanical, inert,  causation.  In  anti-sequential 
causation  the  ideal  cause  first  discloses  itself 


24  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

at  the  end  of  the  transaction,  and  is  therefore 
often  spoken  of  as  the  final  cause ;  whereas 
the  sequential  cause,  present  at  the  beginning 
and  actual  throughout,  is  known  as  the  efi&- 
cient  cause. 

vn 

Parallel  with  this  distinction  among  causes 
runs  a  similar  distinction  among  sciences. 
Those  concerned  with  tracing  the  operation 
of  sequential  causes  —  sciences  like  physics, 
psychology,  history  —  are  the  descriptive  sci- 
ences; those  which  are  busied  with  anti-se- 
quential causation,  like  ethics,  the  norma- 
tive. The  reasons  for  the  name  of  the  first 
set  are  now  obvious.  In  these  we  do  nothing 
but  describe  a  series  of  facts.  That  light 
moves  in  vacuo  at  the  rate  of  186,300  miles  a 
second;  that,  when  not  interfered  with  by 
consciousness,  sensitive  experiences  transform 
themselves  into  motor  manifestations ;  that 
the  baser  metal  in  a  nation's  coinage  tends  to 
drive  out  the  more  costly,  —  these  are  laws  of 
a  physical,  psychological,  and  historical  sort 
which  merely  state  the  fixed  orders  of  occur- 
rence observed  in  their  respective  fields. 
They  state  no  reasons  for  the  occurrence. 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  25 

AH  is  description,  description  of  fact.  Or  if 
the  matters  described  in  any  wise  differ  from 
fact,  they  do  so  merely  by  being  not  facts  of 
a  single  time  and  place,  but  facts  which  are 
believed  to  contain  an  always. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  moral  sciences  have 
it  for  their  business  to  trace  the  working  of 
anti-sequential  causation.  They  are  not  sat- 
isfied with  the  statement  of  a  situation.  TeU 
an  ethical  philosopher  that  in  Barataria  par- 
ents are  always  honored,  and  he  will  still  want 
to  know  whether  parents  there  approve  of 
being  honored,  whether  children  approve  of 
honoring  them,  and  whether  the  reported  facts 
result  from  such  double  approval.  To  say  of 
any  action,  "  Men  have  always  done  it,"  is  not 
the  same  as  to  prove  its  moral  worth.  Should 
slaves  be  held?  should  alcohol  be  drunk? 
should  competition  guide  trade  ?  should  white 
lies  be  told  ?  —  these  are  questions  not  to  be 
settled  by  observing  what  men  have  done. 
We  must  ask  why  they  have  done  what  they 
have,  and  whether  they  might  not  better  have 
done  something  else  ?  Are  these  acts  such  as 
can  morally  be  approved?  Possibly  where 
human  facts  all  run  one  way  it  may  be  toler- 
ably safe  to  take  such  approval  for  granted. 


26  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

But  it  is  this  clear-sighted  approval,  and  it 
alone,  which  makes  the  facts  morally  impor- 
tant. By  themselves,  these  facts  have  no 
ethical  significance.  They  get  it  only  by  ex- 
hibiting a  norm,  or  standard  of  desirabihty, 
at  work  in  some  mind  and  bringing  about 
this  particular  kind  of  conduct  in  preference 
to  some  other,  which  might  also  conceivably 
have  occurred.  It  is  the  constitution  and 
working  of  these  ideal  standards  which  ethics 
investigates. 

An  ethical  law,  accordingly,  —  unlike  a  his- 
torical, psychological,  or  physical  law,  —  is  a 
mandate  or  imperative  and  not  a  description. 
Setting  up  its  standard  of  what  would  be  best 
and  comparing  actual  conditions  therewith,  it 
finds  these  defective  and  bids  them  be  brought 
into  accord  with  its  ideal.  Of  course  they  do 
not  always  come  into  accord.  An  ideal  is 
sometimes  unworkable  and  sometimes  un- 
worked.  It  may  be  acknowledged  as  a  law 
and  yet  not  be  carried  out,  while  a  single 
clear  departure  from  a  descriptive  law  would 
entirely  destroy  its  credit.  Indeed  this  test 
of  fracture  is  often  convenient  for  fixing  the 
character  of  a  law.  The  law  of  supply  and 
demand,  for  example :  is  it  a  natural  law,  a  law 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCBIPTIVE  SCIENCES  27 

in  the  same  sense  as  the  transmission  of  light? 
In  their  ardent  moments  economists  speak  as 
if  it  were.  But  were  it  so,  we  should  not 
need  to  be  warned  not  to  break  it.  Broken 
it  could  not  be.  If  it  is  a  law  and  breakable, 
it  must  be  a  normative  law,  expressing  an 
economic  desideratum  to  which  it  summons 
men  to  conform  on  pain  of  belittlement  in 
case  of  transgression.  A  good  case  illus- 
trating the  easy  confusion  of  the  two  kinds 
of  law  is  found  in  Mommsen's  "  History  of 
Rome  "  (book  v.  chapter  vii.),  when  he  writes  : 
"  By  virtue  of  the  law  that  a  civilized  people 
absorbs  its  neighbors  who  are  in  intellect- 
ual nonage  —  a  law  which  is  as  universally 
valid  and  as  much  a  law  of  nature  as  the 
law  of  gravity,  —  the  Italian  nation  was  en- 
titled to  reduce  to  subjection  the  Greek  states 
of  the  East."  But  we  do  not  say  of  the  law 
of  gravity  that  it  is  entitled  to  do  anything. 
As  a  fact-law,  it  acts  inevitably.  The  norm- 
ative law  —  something  very  different  —  alone 
expresses  judgments  of  propriety.  The  verb 
of  the  normative  sciences  is  consequently  not 
the  verb  "  to  be,"  or  any  part  of  it,  but  the 
verb  "  ought."  And  "  ought  "  itself  is  not 
a  verb  for  all  times  and  persons.     Strictly 


28  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

speaking,  it  is  defective  in  everything  but  the 
imperative  mode,  present  tense,  first  person, 
and  singular  number.  The  subjects  explored 
in  the  descriptive  sciences  —  existence,  fact, 
settled  reality  —  are  announced  by  "  is  "  and 
"  are."  "  Ought "  announces  a  normal  stan- 
dard, ideal,  or  preference.  Normative  sciences 
scrutinize  the  validity  of  these  standards  and 
determine  the  means  and  degrees  of  their  ap- 
plication. Such  sciences  accordingly  declare 
estimates  of  worth  and  not  of  fact.  They 
assess  one  course  of  conduct  as  better  than 
another.     They  are  sciences  of  appreciation. 

As  nothing  except  a  person  is  so  dually 
potential  as  to  be  capable  of  a  better  and  a 
worse,  these  sciences  all  attach  to  persons  and 
to  persons  as  capable  through  action  of  bene- 
fiting or  deteriorating  themselves.  Probably 
all  estimates  of  worth  are  ultimately  personal. 
We  often  seem  to  assess  the  value  of  phy- 
sical objects  and  to  feel  that  one  star  differs 
from  another  in  glory ;  but  in  such  cases  we 
are  thinking  of  the  physical  world  as  the  hab- 
itation of  conscious  man,  and  are  gauging  its 
worth  by  its  adaptation  to  his  knowledge, 
activity,  enjoyment,  or  admiration.  To  a  per- 
son—  to  Adam  —  all  things  properly  come 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES    29 

for  assessment.  The  announcement  and  criti- 
cism of  that  assessment  is  performed  by  the 
word  "  ought  "  in  the  normative  sciences. 

It  should  be  observed,  too,  how  fully  this 
most  important  of  distinctions  is  recognized 
in  ordinary  speech.  I  have  called  the  two 
groups  of  sciences  the  descriptive  and  the 
normative,  a  pair  of  terms  which  because  of 
their  very  technicality  can  be  kept  exact. 
The  normative  sciences  I  have  also  sometimes 
called  sciences  of  appreciation.  But  substan- 
tially the  same  line  of  distinction  is  had  in 
mind  when  the  natural,  positive,  or  observa- 
tional sciences,  the  sciences  of  the  actual,  are 
spoken  of  as  unlike  the  moral,  practical,  regu- 
lative, judicial,  teleological,  the  sciences  of  the 
ideal.  These  are  merely  different  ways  of 
designating  the  same  thing. 

VIII 
But  though  the  records  of  language  show 
that  others  beside  philosophers  are  well  ac- 
quainted with  this  contrast,  it  is  not  easy  to 
hold  the  distinction  steadily  in  mind,  and  to 
apply  it  with  precision.  Commonly  enough  the 
two  kinds  of  causation  are  confused.  Listen  to 
people  trying  to  track  a  series  of  events  which 


80  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

has  brought  about  a  given  result.  They  are 
as  likely  as  not  to  interpolate  among  them 
anti-sequential  matters,  considerations  drawn 
from  beauty,  morality,  or  design.  When  the 
popular  scientists  talk  about  evolution  and 
progress,  we  are  often  left  uncertain  whether 
those  processes  are  to  be  understood  as  mere 
descriptions  of  what  has  happened  or  whether 
some  causative  influence  is  supposed  to  flow 
from  the  end  toward  which  the  process  tends. 
The  very  word  "  tends  "  is  itself  ambiguous. 

Errors  like  this,  where  ideals  are  mistaken 
for  natural  causes,  do  not  cori'upt  our  lives. 
More  disastrous  morally  is  the  substitution 
of  natural  causes  for  ideals.  Something  like 
this  occurs  whenever  a  person  excuses  con- 
duct with  an  explanation  drawn  from  facts. 
I  ask  my  carpenter  why  a  drawer  he  has 
made  does  not  run  smoothly,  and  he  is  per- 
fectly satisfied  when  he  has  told  me  that  it  is 
because  the  joints  are  not  altogether  true  and 
the  wood  has  swelled.  These  are  certainly 
causes,  sequential  causes,  of  the  uneven  move- 
ment. But  it  would  be  better  for  the  carpen- 
ter and  me  if  he  would  turn  his  attention  to 
the  anti-sequential  causes  —  his  lack  of  fore- 
sight, his  haste^  and  his  disposition  to  do  bad 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES    31 

work  for  good  pay.  What  a  multitude  of 
such  inappropriate  explanations  deceive  our 
souls  and  keep  us  in  permanent  degradation. 
"I  always  get  vexed  when  I  am  hurried." 
"  My  way  is  to  speak  out  my  mind  on  all  oc- 
casions." But  does  one  do  well  to  be  vexed 
and  inconsiderate  ?  This  all  important  ques- 
tion cannot  be  shelved  by  statements  of  psy- 
chologic fact.  There  is  nothing  more  immoral 
than  moral  psychology.  Yet  many  a  man 
feels  himself  discharged  from  responsibility 
when  once  he  can  describe  himself. 

And  well  he  may,  for  he  cannot  describe 
himself.  Even  to  make  the  attempt  is  to  deny 
his  personal  character.  Nothing  distinguishes 
him  from  natural  objects  except  his  ability 
through  consciousness  to  figure  future  condi- 
tions and  voluntarily  to  accept  or  reject  them 
as  corporate  parts  of  himself.  This  being  a 
process  which  must  go  on  as  long  as  the  per- 
son does,  is  it  not  absurd  at  any  particular 
moment  to  say  what  a  person  is  ?  How  can 
we  caU  characteristics  finished  which,  if  per- 
sonal, must  be  still  in  the  making?  A  com- 
pleted person  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Our 
proper  business  is  to  accept  an  ever-expanding 
life.     "  Ought,"  the  normative  verb,  is  the 


^2  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

one  applicable  to  so  plastic  a  being  as  a  per- 
son. "  Is  "  fits  objects  already  constituted  and 
tolerably  fixed.  While  a  picture  is  under  way, 
no  artist  says  of  it,  "  This  is  my  picture,"  for 
that  is  exactly  what  it  is  not.  But  a  person  is 
always  under  way.  Let  us  not,  then,  speak 
of  ourselves  as  things  :  "  I  am  lazy,"  "  I  am 
learned,"  "  This  trait  came  to  me  from  my 
grandfather."  In  reality,  morality  has  nothing 
to  do  with  facts ;  or,  rather,  it  has  this  to  do 
with  them,  to  take  them  as  its  point  of  depar- 
ture. While  the  descriptive  sciences  are  busy 
discovering  the  laws  of  what  already  is,  the 
laws  of  the  normative  sciences  declare  what 
ought  to  be. 

IX 

How  many  normative  sciences  are  there? 
As  many  as  there  are  distinguishable  fields  of 
human  activity.  Ultimately,  all  action  centres 
in  the  will  and  from  it  goes  forth  to  modify 
the  world  we  inhabit.  The  root,  therefore,  of 
all  normative  sciences  is  ethics,  the  science  of 
the  will  par  excellence.  But  this  root  spreads 
and  branches.  Knowing  is  an  active  process, 
and  has  its  ethics,  summed  up  in  logic  and 
epistemology.     These  sciences  do  not  chroni- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  DESCRIPTIVE  SCIENCES  33 

cle  the  facts  of  men's  reasonings,  but  attempt 
to  establish  canons  by  which  reasonings  may 
be  proved  to  be  good  or  bad.  So,  too,  there 
is  a  kind  of  activity  in  the  feelings,  sufficient 
at  least  to  make  them  amenable  to  standards  of 
better  and  worse.  Esthetics  investigate  these 
standards.  In  it  our  admirations  of  beauty 
are  scrutinized,  classified,  organized.  Laws 
of  taste  are  formulated  which  subsequently 
assume  no  little  magisterial  power,  and  are 
occasionally  allowed  even  to  employ  the  sacred 
word  "  ought."  Beside  these  greater  norma- 
tive sciences,  there  are  the  subordinate  ones 
of  economics,  sociology,  pedagogics,  grammar, 
and  rhetoric.  All  these,  though  containing 
much  observational  material,  are  by  no  means 
purely  descriptive.  They  have  ethical  roots, 
and  show  in  their  several  fields  how  one  ought 
to  act. 

X 

To  sum  up.  I  have  sought  to  find  the  field 
of  ethics  and  so  to  reach  a  definition  of  con- 
duct and  character.  Dividing  the  universe  in 
the  broadest  possible  way  into  matters  which 
exhibit  consciousness  and  those  which  do  not, 
—  into  philosophy  and  physics,  —  ethics  ob- 
viously falls  in   the  former  section.     But  a 


84  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

moral  being  must  be  not  merely  cognitive. 
He  must  be  active  also.  He  must  possess  con- 
sciousness, not  as  a  trait  attendant  on  all 
others,  but  as  that  which  directs  and  organ- 
izes all  into  the  unity  of  an  expanding  life. 
The  deeds  of  a  being  so  organized  are  re- 
corded in  history,  where,  however,  alternatives 
are  not  considered.  But  a  person  is  in  some 
sense  free,  that  is,  he  has  at  each  instant  more 
than  a  single  Hue  of  conduct  before  him. 
Hence,  a  physical,  psychological,  historical 
description  of  him  is  always  incomplete,  neg- 
lecting as  it  does  the  unfulfilled  possibiKties 
of  his  nature.  The  principles  which  decide 
which  of  these  possibiHties  he  shall  fulfill, 
ethics  establishes.  Its  laws  are  accordingly 
not  descriptions  of  what  a  person  is  and  how 
he  has  acted,  but  are  commands  declaring 
what  he  should  be  and  do.  Laws  of  this 
anticipatory  sort  express  a  pecuHar  kind  of 
causation  and  give  rise  to  a  special  group  of 
sciences,  of  which  ethics  is  everywhere  the 
root. 


REFERENCES  ON  THE  NORMATIVE  CHARACTER 
OP   ETHICS. 

Sidgwick's  Methods  of  Ethics,  ch.  i.  §§  1-2. 
Bradley's  Ethical  Studies,  p.  174. 
Alexander's  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  p.  62. 
Balfour's  Philosophic  Doubt,  Appendix. 
Mackenzie's  Manual  of  Ethics,  ch.  i. 
Royce's  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  lect.  xii. 
Dewey's  Outlines  of  Ethics,  p.  174. 
James's  Will  to  Believe,  p.  189. 
Wuudt's  Facts  of  the  Moral  Life,  Introdaction. 


n 

ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW 


n 

ETHICS   AND   THE   LAW 


A  PERSON,  then,  a  being  capable  of  conduct 
and  character,  is  one  whose  movements  are 
directed  not  by  past  facts  but  by  ideals  of  a 
future,  ideals  depicting  one  course  of  action 
as  marked  by  a  worth  superior  to  some  other. 
Such  a  person,  we  might  say,  is  directed 
rather  by  the  quality  of  his  causes  than  by 
their  quantity.  The  laws  that  guide  him  will 
be  of  the  nature  of  assessments,  or  compara- 
tive estimates  of  worth.  And  these  laws  will 
always  presuppose  that  they  may  be  disre- 
garded and  that  he  on  whom  they  are  laid 
may  accept  a  lower  worth  in  place  of  a  higher. 
Indeed,  he  may  altogether  neglect  considera- 
tion of  worth  and  allow  unassessed  forces  to 
control  him  precisely  as  they  do  things.  So 
conceived,  a  person  would  seem  to  be  the  very 
being  contemplated  by  the  law,  especially  by 


40  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

criminal  law.  May  not  fresh  light  be  thrown 
on  conduct  and  character  by  studying  the 
resemblance  and  contrast  between  the  legal 
and  ethical  conceptions  of  a  person?  That 
is  the  problem  of  the  present  lecture. 

Certainly  ethics  has  closer  affinities  with 
the  law  than  with  any  of  the  provinces 
hitherto  considered.  In  method,  in  beings 
addressed,  and  in  subject-matter  the  two  sci- 
ences substantially  coincide.  Their  procedure 
is  the  same,  for  no  more  than  ethics  is  the 
law  a  descriptive  science.  It  is  not  satisfied 
with  investigating  what  has  happened.  Its 
statute  book  erects  a  standard  and  calls  each 
member  of  the  community  to  conform  himself 
thereto.  Its  laws  are  commands,  and  in  com- 
mon with  ethics  it  employs  the  majestic  and 
unreal  verb  ought.  This  you  ought  to  do ; 
whether  you  have  done  it  in  the  past,  or 
whether  it  ever  has  been  done,  is  unimpor- 
tant. Henceforth  this  must  be,  it  declares, 
without  regard  to  the  actual.  Its  eye  is  on 
the  future.  Like  ethics,  it  considers  only 
the  possible,  the  ideal ;  and  through  specific 
laws  seeks  to  give  reality  to  that  ideal. 

Ethics  and  the  law  have  thus  the  same 
mode  of  regard.    Both  are  normative  and  man- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  41 

datory.  Both,  too,  address  their  commands 
to  persons,  free  beings  who  know  a  better  and 
a  worse  in  conduct,  and  are  assumed  capable 
of  giving  active  expression  to  their  ideals  of 
what  good  conduct  should  be.  Statute  books 
are  in  reality  compendiums  of  personal  ideals. 
They  classify  the  possible  situations  of  human 
life,  assessing  the  worth  of  each,  and  are  as 
confident  as  ethical  treatises  that  excellence 
so  delineated  can  be  reached.  Moreover  the 
subject-matter  of  the  two  provinces  is  largely 
indistinguishable.  Arson,  murder,  the  keep- 
ing of  contracts,  are  concerns  at  once  of 
ethics  and  the  law.  They  and  matters  like 
them  fall  under  a  double  sway.  What  the 
law  deals  with  is  dealt  with  by  ethics.  What 
ethics  deals  with  may  also  be  dealt  with  by 

the  law. 

n 

Accordingly  every  period  of  ethical  inquiry 
has  had  its  writers  who  have  regarded  the 
two  provinces  as  too  closely  related  to  be  sun- 
dered. Their  practical  identity  was  asserted, 
for  example,  by  Hobbes  when  ethics  first 
arose  in  England.  According  to  Hobbes,  all 
government,  civil  and  moral  alike,  is  in  the 
power  of  the  prince.     Whatever  he  reckons 


42  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

wrong,  that  is  wrong.  Nor  is  this  opinion  so 
ahsurd  as  at  first  sight  it  appears.  Even  if 
we  do  not  with  Hobbes  think  a  prince  the 
perfect  embodiment  of  the  governmental  idea, 
we  still  in  another  form  reach  substantially 
his  conclusion  when  we  give  to  the  enact- 
ments of  a  legislature  ultimate  authority  and 
hold  that  these  can  estabHsh  right  and  wrong. 
Hobbes  merely  carries  this  view  to  its  extreme. 
His  prince,  like  our  legislature,  can  cause  that 
to  be  wrong  to-day,  which  was  right  yesterday. 
Nothing,  Hobbes  thinks,  is  right  or  wrong  in 
itself  and  independently  of  positive  law.  Out- 
side law,  morality  does  not  exist.  I  am  not 
acquainted  with  any  other  EngHsh  writer 
who  identifies  the  two  fields  so  completely, 
but  in  our  own  age  a  widely  influential  moral- 
ist has  closely  approximated  them.  Jeremy 
Bentham,  who  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  did  more  than  any  other  man 
of  his  time  to  rationalize  the  laws  of  England, 
entitles  his  masterly  book  "  A  Treatise  on 
Morals  and  Legislation."  He  might  almost 
as  well  have  called  it  morals  or  legislation ; 
for  though  Bentham  sometimes  speaks  as  if 
there  were  a  special  point  of  view  appropriate 
to  ethics,  and  another  slightly  different  for 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  43 

legislation,  the  difference  is  not  insisted  on. 
With  Bentham  the  legislative  features  of 
morality  are  its  dominant  features. 

Evidently,  then,  when  we  try  to  separate 
ethics  from  jurisprudence  we  undertake  a 
serious  task.  The  boundaries  of  the  two  are 
so  nearly  conterminous  that  the  partition  is  a 
matter  of  toil  and  subtlety.  I  believe,  how- 
ever, that  they  can  be  parted.  Indeed,  I  think 
it  of  great  consequence  for  the  understanding 
of  our  subject  that  they  should  be.  Yet  I 
must  acknowledge  that  it  is  the  same  subject- 
matter  which  is  looked  at  by  the  lawyer  in 
one  way,  by  the  moralist  in  another.  To  find 
the  precise  point  of  view  from  which  the  mat- 
ter is  surveyed  by  the  moralist  is  all  I  seek. 
In  searching  for  it  I  shall  not  examine  the 
nature  and  niceties  of  the  law  itself.  That 
is  unnecessary,  and  something,  too,  for  which 
I  am  not  fitted.  I  merely  inquire  what  light 
the  law  can  shed  on  my  special  subject  of 
ethics.  And  as  the  relations  of  the  civil  law 
to  ethics  are  generally  more  remote  and  in- 
tricate than  those  of  the  criminal  law,  I  shall 
conduct  the  discussion  chiefly  in  terms  of  the 
latter.  For  the  sake  of  brevity,  too,  I  shall 
allow  myself  to  speak  of  all  offenses  against 


44  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

the  law  as  crimes,  in  the  same  way  as  we 
speak  of  those  against  religion  as  sins  and 
those  against  morals  as  vices. 

ni 

At  the  very  start,  it  is  obvious  that  as  a 
fact,  whatever  the  reasons,  certain  sorts  of 
conduct  fall  more  naturally  under  the  cogni- 
zance of  the  law  and  others  under  that  of 
ethics.  The  immoral  is  not  always  the  illegal, 
nor  the  illegal  the  immoral.  Let  us  assure 
ourselves  of  the  first  of  these  propositions. 

When  we  ask  what  species  of  immorahty  is 
most  widely  destructive,  what  checks  personal 
life  most  effectually,  some  of  us  would  incline 
to  say  it  is  indolence.  Morality  is  a  provision 
for  the  widest  possible  action.  Indolence 
hinders  action.  It  might  well  be  held,  then, 
that  the  tap-root  of  vice  is  laziness.  Men  are 
too  sluggish  to  do  what  they  ought  to  do.  A 
multitude  of  vices  are  but  manifestations  of 
slackness.  A  character  decays  about  as  rapidly 
which  allows  itself  to  be  lazy  as  one  which 
has  a  positive  craving  for  vice.  Accordingly 
we  might  expect,  since  indolence  is  so  de- 
structive of  moral  fibre,  that  the  first  page  of 
the  statute  book  would  be  given  up  to  for- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  45 

biddals  of  it.  But  one  may  hunt  that  statute 
book  from  cover  to  cover  and  never  find  the 
smallest  objection  to  indolence.  Of  course  I 
speak  merely  of  indolence  itself  and  not  of 
certain  objectionable  consequences  which  may, 
or  may  not,  flow  from  it.  When  through 
slackness  I  wrong  my  neighbor,  the  law  re- 
sents the  wrong.  But  it  is  the  social  dam- 
age which  is  punished,  not  the  inner  vice. 
One  may  be  as  lazy  as  he  pleases,  provided 
he  brings  no  damage  to  others,  and  the  law 
will  let  him  go. 

Perhaps  some  one  may  think  that  the  vice 
of  indolence  is  but  a  vague  one  and  may  im- 
agine that  it  is  neglected  by  the  law  on  this 
account.  Let  us  consider,  then,  a  highly 
specific  vice,  the  vice  of  lying.  What  single 
act  more  certainly  declares  the  dastard?  We 
scorn  a  liar ;  for  society  is  possible  only  where 
there  is  mutual  confidence.  The  liar  is  an 
anti-social  creature.  He  breaks  down  the 
bridges  between  man  and  man,  and  by  his 
own  act  renders  himself  an  outcast.  Auda- 
cious, too,  as  is  lying,  it  is  ordinarily  prompted 
by  cowardice.  liars  fear  truth.  Not  un- 
wisely did  the  founders  of  Harvard  College 
select  "  Veritas "  as  the  sacred  word  which 


46  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

a  young  man  should  cherish  throughout 
his  training  if  he  would  come  to  clean  and 
influential  manhood  ;  for  in  modem  commer- 
cial life,  more  than  in  any  other  period  of  the 
world's  history,  truthfulness  is  a  central  vir- 
tue. Accordingly  we  might  naturally  expect 
that  modern  law  would  visit  its  infraction 
with  the  severest  penalties.  In  fact,  no  pen- 
alty against  lying  exists  —  no  penalty,  I  mean, 
directed  against  the  real  evil,  the  act  of  utter- 
ing falsehood.  When  a  liar  breaks  a  con- 
tract, the  aggrieved  party  can  exact  payment 
for  the  loss.  But  the  law  overlooks  precisely 
that  element  in  the  He  which  strikes  us  as  its 
most  vicious  feature  —  its  necessary  debase- 
ment of  the  character  of  the  liar ;  while  the 
casual  effects  in  possible  damage  to  other 
members  of  the  community  it  relentlessly 
forbids  and  pursues. 

IV 

These  two  cases  will  suffice  for  half  of  my 
purpose.  They  show  that  the  immoral  is  not 
always  the  illegal.  But  is  the  illegal  always 
the  immoral  ?  That  is  the  other  half  of  the 
question.  To  prove  my  idtimate  point,  that 
the  two  fields  of  ethics  and  the  law,  while 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  4T 

often  overlapping,  are  not  designed  to  cover 
precisely  the  same  ground,  I  need  to  name 
some  matters  of  the  law  which  are  not  moral 
matters. 

There  comes  to  me  a  vivid  remembrance  of 
my  boyhood.  Born  and  bred  on  Green  Street, 
Boston,  one  day  when  I  was  but  a  child  I 
sauntered  down  Court  Street.  Passing  Scol- 
lay's  Buildings,  I  foimd  a  crowd  blockading 
Court  Square  and  the  streets  surrounding  the 
old  court-house.  Soldiers  held  the  people 
back.  Curiosity,  stimulated  by  the  uniforms 
of  the  soldiers,  drew  me  on.  I  gained  a  posi- 
tion in  front  of  the  broad  stone  steps,  and  had 
hardly  reached  it  when  the  great  doors  of  the 
court-house  opened  and  a  black  man  came 
out,  guarded  on  each  side  by  officers.  He  wa& 
led  through  the  two  files  of  soldiers  which 
stretched  down  State  Street  as  far  as  my  eyea 
could  see.  It  was  Anthony  Burns,  being  taken 
to  the  United  States  vessel  which  carried  him 
back  to  slavery.  My  blood  boiled,  and  the 
blood  of  all  Boston  boiled.  We  said,  this 
may  be  legal,  but  it  is  outrageously  immoral. 
We  acknowledged  that  the  law  should  be 
obeyed.  We  did  not  blame  the  two  sheriffs 
who  conducted  the  shrinking  negro  through 


48  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

the  glittering  lines.  They  were  doing  their 
duty,  and  we  believed  them  to  be  as  indig- 
nant as  ourselves  that  such  a  duty  was  laid 
upon  them.  What  we  blamed  was  the  law. 
A  bad  law,  we  called  it.  Being  law,  it  must 
be  obeyed ;  but  its  very  existence  struck  at 
morality.  Morality  and  the  law,  never  quite 
coincident,  were  here  in  open  conflict. 

Seldom  is  the  antagonism  so  extreme. 
What  enters  into  the  law  cannot  usually  be 
immoral,  unless  the  community  which  makes 
law  is  itself  demoralized.  Upright  commu- 
nities repeal  immoral  laws.  Yet  this  is  not 
always  easy.  We  all  know  how  the  event 
which  I  have  described  came  about.  Through 
compromises  imbedded  in  our  Constitution, 
and  through  peculiar  economic  conditions  in 
the  Southern  States,  an  immorality  almost  im- 
possible to  check  was  spread  through  the 
land.  Cases  of  this  sort  are  at  least  common 
enough  to  compel  us  to  scrutinize  the  moral 
character  of  all  laws,  and  thus  to  bring  them 
for  final  judgment  before  a  higher  court  than 
that  which  originally  enacts.  But  commonly 
enough  non-moral  matters  enter  into  the  law, 
matters  which  would  not  have  been  morally 
commanded  had  they  not  first   been  legally 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  49 

commanded.  Undoubtedly  one  ought  to  pay 
duties  on  whatever  property  of  his  passes  the 
custom-house ;  but  he  could  never  discover 
the  obligation  by  inspecting  the  moral  code 
as  written  on  the  fleshy  tablets  of  his  heart. 
To  find  it,  he  must  turn  to  the  statute  book. 
It  is  not  immoral  not  to  pay  these  duties 
except  as  they  are  commanded  by  the  State. 
To  fail  in  them  then,  is  to  be  an  immoral 
person.  And  this  is  true  of  a  large  body  of 
laws.  They  relate  to  matters  which  but  for 
the  specific  mandates  which  bring  them  to  our 
notice  would  lie  altogether  outside  the  moral 
range. 

Considerations  like  these  are,  I  believe,  suf- 
ficient to  establish  the  fact  that  the  fields  of 
morality  and  the  law  are  different.  It  will  be 
a  longer  matter  to  show  why  they  differ, 
wherein  they  differ,  and  how  much  of  the  one 
lies  outside  the  bounds  of  the  other. 

V 

Before,  however,  I  state  my  own  opinions 
on  these  puzzling  points,  I  want  to  call  atten- 
tion to  some  common  methods  of  distinguish- 
ing the  two  fields  which  do  not  seem  to  me 
altogether  sound.     It  is  often  said  that  the 


60  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

law  differs  from  morality  in  this,  that  its  pre- 
cepts have  a  negative  character.  The  law 
forbids;  it  does  not,  like  morality,  prompt. 
The  proper  dictum  of  the  law  is,  "  Thou  shalt 
not."  Until  we  transgress,  we  are  not  aware 
of  the  law's  existence.  Policemen  watch  sin- 
ners, not  saints.  Criminals  know  a  good  deal 
about  officers  of  the  law,  but  the  rest  of  the 
community  goes  its  way  unconcerned  about 
them.  The  law,  in  short,  contains  no  incen- 
tive. It  is  repressive,  hindering  evil ;  while, 
in  the  moral  life,  we  are  forever  pressed  on 
into  goodness. 

But  I  do  not  find  these  assertions  true. 
The  law  of  the  State  does  not  always  restrain, 
nor  moral  law  always  prompt.  There  is  posi- 
tive prescription  in  both.  By  the  civil  law 
the  forms  to  be  used  in  contracts  are  laid 
down  with  much  exactness.  The  maker  of  a 
contract  must  always  be  of  sound  mind,  and 
the  signature  on  the  deed  be  unquestionably 
his.  These  are  positive  precepts.  Even  in 
the  subordinate  province  of  city  ordinances, 
the  command  is  apt  enough  to  take  on  a  posi- 
tive form.  Sidewalks  must  be  kept  clear.  It 
may  be  said  that  such  an  order  is  in  reality 
negative,  and  means  that  the  sidewalk  is  not 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  51 

to  be  incumbered.  Undoubtedly ;  and  the 
fact  that  it  can  be  stated  in  either  the  positive 
or  negative  form  is  significant.  In  fact,  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  a  purely  positive  or  purely 
negative  statement.  In  all  positive  prescrip- 
tions the  law  is  forbidding  something,  and  in 
its  forbiddals  also  it  prescribes.  I  do  not  see, 
therefore,  how  we  can  say  that  the  law  con- 
fines itself  to  negations.  That  is  impossible. 
And  even  if  it  were  not  so,  this  would  not  dis- 
criminate the  law  from  ethics.  For  do  we  not 
find  the  dicta  of  the  moral  life  itself  predomi- 
nantly expressed  in  negative  terms  ?  Lying 
and  laziness  seem  more  often  forbidden  than 
truth  and  diligence  to  be  commanded.  Ex- 
periences on  this  point  may  differ,  but  I  sus- 
pect we  are  more  generally  conscious  of  our- 
selves as  moral  at  moments  of  temptation, 
moments  when  we  need  to  be  restrained,  than 
in  our  times  of  normal  and  proper  activity. 
Do  we  eat  our  dinners  because  we  feel  a 
moral  prompting  ?  Is  it  not  rather  that  when 
we  inchne  to  improper  food  we  perceive  duty 
to  be  connected  with  eating?  I  think  so. 
Psychologically,  I  believe  it  will  be  found  that 
our  moral  constitution  reports  itself  more  fre- 
quently in  negative  than   in  positive  terms. 


62  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

At  times  when  no  temptation  is  in  sight  we 
are  not  very  fully  aware  of  possessing  a  moral 
nature. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  justify  the  cre- 
ative dealings  of  God  with  man.  We  are 
made  in  a  certain  way.  That  is  sufficient  for 
my  purpose.  Yet  it  may  he  well  to  see  how 
it  happens  that  we  suffer  no  harm  from  the 
fact  that  nine  times  out  of  ten  moraHty  comes 
in  the  form  of  forbiddal.  The  truth  is,  ac- 
tions are  not  directed  by  moraHty  alone.  If 
they  were,  our  instincts,  unconscious  impulses, 
and  past  habits  would  be  useless.  But  these 
are  in  fact  the  chief  moving  agencies  of  our 
lives.  For  the  most  part,  they  conduct  us 
safely,  swiftly,  and  with  the  least  waste  of 
energy,  to  the  same  ends  which  conscious 
reason  would  select.  Only  when  instinctive 
guidance  blunders,  do  we  require  the  interven- 
tion of  a  more  discerning  power.  That  man 
will  have  the  most  free  and  effective  life  who 
gives  full  play  to  his  instincts  so  long  as  these 
move  on  approved  paths.  But  the  moment 
suspicion  arises  that  he  is  on  the  wrong  track, 
he  will  be  wise  to  pause,  to  call  on  instinct  to 
explain  itself  and  show  whether  its  goal  will 
bear  inspection.     The  negative  uses  of  con- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  68 

science  are  accordingly  of  far  greater  conse- 
quence than  the  positive.  The  function  of 
prompting  is  usually  more  healthily  taken  by 
the  blinder  parts  of  our  nature,  conscience  re- 
serving itself  for  a  veto  power.  The  man  who 
eats  his  dinner  as  a  moral  duty  will  probably 
not  digest  it  as  well  as  one  whose  appetite  bids 
him  eat.  No  doubt  there  are  cases  where  in- 
stinct suppHes  no  initiative;  or  even,  on  ac- 
count of  past  habit  and  novel  circumstances, 
supplies  an  erroneous  one ;  and  here  we  must 
act  simply  on  positive  moral  command.  But 
such  cases  of  purely  positive  prompting  are 
no  more  usual  in  morality  than  in  the  law. 

Another  suggestion  often  made  for  parting 
the  two  fields  seems  to  me  of  much  greater 
interest,  though  I  cannot  yield  it  a  full  as- 
sent. The  law,  it  is  said,  looks  on  the  out- 
ward appearance,  morality  on  the  heart. 
Results  are  the  prime  concern  of  the  law, 
motives  of  morality.  And  since  morality 
judges  man's  inner  nature,  I  may  justly  ac- 
count myself  upright,  though  a  long  train 
of  disasters  has  issued  from  me.  I  did  not 
intend  them.  My  purpose  was  to  bless 
my  fellows.  By  some  untoward  event,  that 
which  was  designed  as  benefit  went  forth  as 


54  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

injury.  Morally,  I  am  not  responsible, 
though  legally  I  may  be.  The  law  and  mo- 
raHty,  dealing  with  the  outer  and  the  inner 
life,  exactly  supplement  each  other.  What 
one  regards,  the  other  disregards. 

Once  more,  I  do  not  see  that  this  mode  of 
separation,  admirably  clear  as  it  is,  quite  fits 
the  facts.  The  law,  Hke  morals,  often  con- 
cerns itself  with  the  interior  of  a  man,  with 
him  from  whom  the  act  proceeds.  If  I  loll  a 
man,  the  law  investigates  not  merely  the  fact 
of  his  death  at  my  hands;  it  asks  further, 
did  I  intend  to  kill  him  ?  Had  I  hatred  in 
my  heart,  and  whence  came  my  motive  for 
putting  him  to  death  ?  My  endeavor  will  be 
to  show  that  I  never  thought  of  such  a  thing 
as  killing  him,  that  I  desired  something  quite 
different,  and  that  by  unforeseen  accident  he 
met  death  through  me.  When  I  have  shown 
this  and  proved  that  I  had  no  hostility  to 
him,  but  that  his  death  was  due  to  adverse 
conditions  in  which  he  and  I  were  alike  in- 
volved, I  shall  expect  to  be  acquitted;  that  is, 
the  law  in  deciding  on  the  crime  of  murder 
does  study  the  criminal,  his  interior  condi- 
tions, his  intentions,  and  is  not  concerned 
simply  with  results. 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  65 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  an  error  to  say  that 
in  our  moral  judgments  we  disregard  conse- 
quences. I  know  this  is  often  said,  but  I 
cannot  say  it.  For  to  my  mind  only  in  the 
consequences  is  the  full  meaning  of  an  act 
revealed.  When  you  have  injured  me,  it  is  a 
poor  excuse  to  say  that  you  merely  intended 
play.  No  doubt  you  did.  But  in  that  you 
were  culpable.  Your  intention  was  only  par- 
tially formed.  You  did  not  fuUy  trace  the 
meaning  of  such  an  action  as  yours.  That 
meaning,  displayed  in  the  consequence,  con- 
demns you.  It  should  have  been  in  your 
mind  when  you  acted,  shaping  the  intention. 
To  hold  that  conduct  and  character  are  ex- 
clusively concerned  with  inner  conditions  and 
may  disregard  consequences  is  absurd.  Ac- 
tion aims  at  altering  things,  and  must  know 
the  things  it  would  alter.  Moral  motives  do 
not  refer  to  a  world  of  fancy.  Accordingly, 
I  can  make  no  such  sharp  partition,  handing 
motives  over  to  the  moral  court,  and  conse- 
quences to  the  civil,  for  judgment.  Reality 
is  not  so  dualistically  simple. 

It  is  not,  then,  by  the  positive  form  of  its 
command  or  the  internal  nature  of  its  regard 
that  ethics    detaches    itself  from   the  law. 


56  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

Both  of  these  distinctions,  however  signifi- 
cant, are  rough  and  inadequate.  They  do 
not  set  ethics  in  any  such  instructive  contrast 
with  the  law  that  hy  it  a  better  understand- 
ing is  to  be  had  of  conduct  and  character. 
That  is  what  I  wish.  To  reach  it,  I  shall  in- 
dicate four  respects  in  which  the  law  and 
ethics  look  at  wrong  acts  differently.  These 
four  respects  have  intimate  relations  to  one 
another  and  are  of  greater  and  less  complex- 
ity. The  more  complex  and  fundamental  I 
discuss  last. 

VI 

The  first  point,  then,  at  which  ethics  and 
the  law  divide  is  this :  the  law  works  through 
fixed  penalties.  Without  a  penalty  there  is 
no  law.  Draw  up  an  enactment  against  a 
crime  known  to  bring  the  community  damage, 
describe  the  crime  with  the  greatest  exactness, 
and  persuade  a  legislature  to  make  it  law. 
If  no  penalty  is  attached,  it  is  a  mere  piece 
of  advice  with  which  courts  will  not  concern 
themselves.  Accordingly  every  crime  has  its 
cost  marked  in  plain  figures,  precisely  like 
goods  in  a  grocer's  catalogue.  Indulging 
myself   in   picking  a  pocket  will  cost  me  a 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  57 

small  fine  and  some  days  of  imprisonment. 
If  I  aspire  to  bank-breaking,  tbat  will  entail 
an  expense  of  some  years  in  tbe  state  prison. 
And  if  I  proceed  farther  and  cannot  feel  the 
enjoyment  of  bank-breaking  complete  unless 
I  also  knock  a  watchman  down,  this  too  will 
be  open  to  me  but  on  rather  expensive  terms. 
In  all  these  cases  the  undertaking  has  been 
considered  beforehand  and  the  suitable  charge 
assessed.  Crimes,  like  commodities,  have  their 
fixed  prices.  Or,  if  the  prices  are  not  pre- 
cisely fixed,  it  is  because  crimes  —  like  com- 
modities again  —  differ  in  quality.  A  max- 
imum and  minimum  are  fixed,  between  which 
the  higher  and  lower  gradations  fall. 

Such  is  the  systematic,  almost  mechanical 
assignment  of  penalties  in  the  criminal  code. 
But  the  moral  code  may  be  held  to  possess 
its  penalties,  too,  and  penalties  no  less  sure  or 
severe.  Who  of  us  has  committed  hidden 
sin  without  hidden  smart?  We  did  some- 
thing which  at  the  moment  seemed  a  trifle ; 
and  yet  as  we  walk  the  streets  we  are  in  dis- 
comfort and  wish  we  might  detach  ourselves 
from  the  wrong-doer.  But  escape  is  not  easy ; 
we  go  to  our  room,  sit  in  our  solitary  chair, 
but  find  the  offensive  sinner  seated  in  the 


68  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

same  chair  with  ourselves.  Who  of  us  would 
not  be  willing  to  undergo  sharp  physical  suf- 
fering if  by  this  means  we  could  once  for  all 
be  free  from  our  mental  distress?  Am  I 
right,  then,  in  saying  that  the  law  is  con- 
trasted with  morals  through  its  use  of  penal- 
ties ?  Certainly  not ;  but  through  its  use  of 
fixed  penalties.  The  stress  is  on  the  adjec- 
tive. For  the  alarming;  fact  about  a  moral 
misdemeanor  is  that  we  never  know  what  it  is 
going  to  cost.  Trivial  as  it  seems  at  first,  it 
draws  long  pangs  in  its  train.  One  day  when 
I  was  a  boy  at  school  I  committed  a  sin  which 
at  the  moment  I  hardly  knew  to  be  a  sin.  I 
tried  to  set  myself  above  another  person  very 
dear  to  me.  The  impulse  came,  and  I  be- 
Uttled  him  whom  I  loved.  It  was  a  base  act. 
I  am  glad  to  confess  it  here.  Though  many 
years  have  intervened,  I  cannot  recall  the  ex- 
perience without  shame.  Such  things  pursue 
us  indefinitely.  We  cannot  foresee  how  long 
their  pains  will  last.  There  is  no  such  con- 
stancy in  them  as  appears  in  the  working  of 
the  law.  Between  the  degree  of  suffering 
and  the  character  of  the  misdeed  little  relation 
exists.  No  two  persons 'ever  had  the  same 
conscience  pang  for  the  same  vileness.     In 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  59 

the  same  life  the  penalty  for  some  piece  of 
immorality  will  be  great  at  one  time,  and  for 
a  precisely  similar  one  at  some  other  period 
•will  be  almost  insignificant.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  law  these  variations  of  moral 
penalty  are  unjust. 

VII 

The  injustice  deepens  as  we  state  the  sec- 
ond point  of  contrast  between  ethics  and  the 
law,  —  that  in  the  assignment  of  moral  pen- 
alties the  order  followed  by  the  law  is  directly 
reversed.  When  a  criminal  is  convicted,  be- 
fore fixing  the  penalty  a  judge  is  careful  to 
inquire  whether  it  is  a  first  offense.  If  so,  a 
comparatively  slight  punishment  is  imposed. 
If,  however,  the  criminal  is  an  old  offender, 
he  is  punished  severely.  A  high  degree  of 
pain  associated  with  hardened  offenses,  a  low 
degree  with  initial  offenses,  is  the  honorable 
aim  of  the  law.  Nothing  of  this  sort  is  found 
in  the  moral  field.  Penalties  there  are  as- 
signed in  exactly  the  reverse  order.  Those 
who  suffer  most  acutely  for  sin  are  those  of 
the  finest  moral  organization.  Astonishing 
as  this  fact  is,  it  is  too  generally  acknow- 
ledged to  require  citation  of  evidence.     All 


60  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

that  is  necessary  is  to  mark  the  contrast  be- 
tween it  and  what  is  counted  just  in  legal 
procedure. 

I  know  a  man  who  has  always  prided  him- 
self on  veracity,  and  has  brought  himself  to 
such  refinement  of  truthfulness  as  is  not  usual 
in  his  social  circle.  Yesterday,  finding  him- 
self in  peculiar  circumstances,  he  fell  —  as  he 
now  sees  —  into  deception.  He  is  smarting 
over  the  remembrance,  ashamed  at  being 
stained  with  what  he  has  always  detested.  If 
he  consults  me  and  asks  whether,  as  an  ethical 
teacher,  I  can  suggest  any  way  of  escape  from 
his  pains,  —  somewhat  excessive  for  so  slight 
a  slip,  —  in  common  honesty  I  must  answer, 
"  Yes,  I  know  exactly  the  way.  Go  and  lie 
some  more.  The  more  frequently  you  lie,  the 
less  you  will  be  disturbed.  When  you  have 
made  yourself  a  consummate  Har,  you  will  go 
through  your  fictions  as  smoothly  as  you  be- 
fore told  the  truth."  In  all  varieties  of  sin,  it 
is  the  first  steps  which  cost.  A  person  long 
accustomed  to  iniquity  finds  little  hardship  in 
it.  Yet  this  is  exactly  what,  happening  in  a 
court  of  law,  we  should  call  scandalous.  A 
man  is  convicted  of  drunkenness.  "  It  seems 
a  bad  case,"  says  the  judge.    "  Give  him  six 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  61 

months  in  the  house  of  correction."  "  Your 
honor,"  says  the  officer,  "  it  is  not  his  first  of- 
fense." "  Ah,  call  it  three  months."  "  But," 
insists  the  officer,  "  he  has  been  arrested  five 
times  before  for  the  same  thing."  "  Give  him 
a  month,  then."  What  a  travesty  of  justice 
that  would  be  !  Yet,  something  like  it  is  hap- 
pening in  the  moral  order  every  day  of  our 
Hves.  The  penalties  laid  upon  us  there  are 
sharp  in  proportion  as  we  are  near  to  right- 
eousness ;  light,  as  our  criminality  increases. 
It  is  a  common  belief  that  if  a  man  defi- 
nitely chooses  evil  in  this  life,  sinking  himself 
in  sin,  he  will  be  punished  in  a  world  to  come ; 
and  the  pains  of  hell  have  sometimes  been 
interpreted  by  that  which  we  here  know  as 
the  conscience  pang.  A  terrible  picture  it  is ; 
so  terrible,  that  modern  humanitarians  have 
difficulty  in  accepting  it  and  believing  that  a 
good  God  has  contrived  such  chastisement. 
But  we  can  imagine  a  hell  more  awful  still. 
Suppose  that  hereafter  there  is  no  pain,  sup- 
pose that  those  who  have  given  themselves  up 
to  sin  here  are  there  able  to  sin  without  dis- 
turbance ;  would  not  that  be  more  terrible, 
and  more  in  accord  with  our  experience  here  ? 
Let  us  be  glad  of  moral  suffering.    When  we 


62  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

find  that  matters  which  were  once  bitterly 
degrading  no  longer  distress,  we  may  tremble. 
I  have  been  told  that  sexual  vice  does  not 
work  the  same  damage  in  the  Frenchman's 
character  as  in  the  Anglo-Saxon's.  Whether 
this  is  the  case,  I  do  not  know.  But  if  it  is, 
it  marks  the  low  estate  of  the  French.  A  con- 
venient test  of  the  height  which  the  character 
of  any  man  or  nation  has  attained  is  found 
by  noticing  how  disintegrating  vice  is.  If  a 
man  is  not  much  broken  up  by  vice,  but  it 
comes  and  goes  in  him  without  effecting 
much  alteration,  that  man  is  rudely  organized. 
Whereas,  if  even  a  slight  vice  creeping  into 
the  character  throws  its  delicate  enginery  out 
of  gear  and  brings  the  man  into  painful  dis- 
accord with  himself,  it  is  certain  that  that 
man  is  constructed  on  a  fine  moral  scale.  No 
doubt  excess  of  moral  delicacy  is  possible. 
Hardihood  in  goodness  is  as  desirable  as  in 
bodily  matters.  We  need  to  discriminate  in 
evil  and  to  foster  the  habit  of  distinguishing 
great  things  from  small.  Men  stoutly  right- 
eous seek  to  fill  conduct  with  excellence  rather 
than  to  keep  it  free  from  blemish.  But,  neg- 
lecting for  the  moment  the  protective  influ- 
ence of  moral  vigor,  a  noble  character  is  hurt 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  63 

more  by  wrong-doing,  and  receives  from  it 
more  distress,  than  does  an  ignoble  one.  It 
is  foolish  to  suppose  great  sinners  are  great 
sufPerers,  or  that  he  is  a  fortunate  man  who 
escapes  his  evil  deeds  with  small  pains. 

I  have  already  said  that  it  is  not  my  busi- 
ness to  justify  the  ways  of  God  with  man.  I 
am  concerned  with  anatomizing  our  moral 
structure  and  making  it  clearly  understood. 
Yet,  so  strange  a  phenomenon  as  this  arrange- 
ment of  moral  penalties,  by  which  the  severity 
of  punishment  diminishes  as  guilt  increases, 
calls  for  a  few  words  of  justification.  If  the 
law  were  administered  in  this  way,  there  would 
be  an  uprising  for  the  defense  of  society. 
But,  for  moral  purposes,  I  regard  the  arrange- 
ment as  a  fortunate  one,  and  think  any  other 
would  be  disastrous.  All  depends  on  what 
is  to  be  accomplished.  The  aim  of  morality 
is  not  merely  the  stoppage  of  evil  acts,  but 
the  production  of  righteous  persons,  —  beings 
who  freely  and  of  themselves  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness,  and  seek  to  incorporate  it 
into  their  structure.  For  these  moral  ends, 
compulsory  methods  are  inappropriate.  A 
moral  being  must  develop  himself,  choose  his 
own  ideals,  and  take  part  in  shaping  his  own 


64  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

creation.     The  present  arrangement  of  moral 
penalties  directly  assists  such  an  end. 

Suppose  having  the  general  desire  to  be  a 
worthy  man,  I  come  to  some  dividing  of  the 
ways  where  a  path  runs  off  toward  evil.  Is 
it  not  fortunate  to  find  a  well-marked  sign- 
board set  up  at  that  divergence,  and  when  I 
begin  upon  the  wrong  road  to  have  my  atten- 
tion vigorously  called  to  it  ?  That  is  just 
what  I  should  desire  if  I  were  earnest  about 
becoming  a  wise  director  of  myself.  I  should 
be  pleased  to  hear  a  preventing  voice,  that 
could  not  pass  unheeded,  saying,  "  No,  no  ! 
that  is  the  wrong  road ;  the  other,  the  right. 
Do  not  take  that  way  again."  If,  however, 
I  answer,  "  I  know  it  is  the  wrong  road,  but  I 
propose  to  take  it,"  would  it  not  be  fitting 
that  my  attention  should  be  less  strongly 
summoned  a  second  time?  And  if  I  grad- 
ually make  up  my  bad  mind  and  say,  "  Evil, 
be  thou  my  good,"  what  advantage  could  re- 
sult from  further  insistence  on  the  evils  of 
my  course.  Warnings  might  well  be  with- 
drawn as  my  evil  purposes  become  clear.  All 
depends  on  the  aim  of  the  penalty.  If  pun- 
ishment is  to  constrain  in  the  interest  of  others 
beside  myself,  unquestionably  the  order  of 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  65 

penal  infliction  observed  in  the  criminal  law 
is  essential.  But  if  the  penalty  is  designed 
as  a  factor  in  moral  discipline,  and  is  laid  in 
my  own  behalf  to  assist  my  judgment  of  what 
is  right  and  wrong,  then  plainly  in  whatever 
degree  I  have  made  up  my  mind  and  com- 
mitted my  character  to  a  given  direction,  the 
need  of  punishment  passes  away.  Such  at 
any  rate  is  the  state  of  things  we  actually 
find  ;  and  the  things  that  holy  evolution  has 
produced,  it  is  generally  wise  to  believe  rea- 
sonable. 

Accordingly  I  can  see  nothing  iniquitous 
in  the  organization  of  moral  penalties.  They 
take  their  place  in  personal  discipline  and  are 
as  clearly  helpful  to  the  moral  life  as  the 
mode  of  imposition  of  legal  penalties  is  to 
the  State.  Each  fits  its  own  field,  and  we  are 
liable  to  mistake  when  we  attempt  to  carry 
notions  of  justice  that  grow  in  the  one  of 
these  fields  over  into  the  unHke  conditions 
of  the  other.  But  the  striking  contrast  be- 
tween the  two  methods  of  assessment  estab- 
lishes a  second  line  of  distinction  between 
ethics  and  the  law. 


66  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

VIII 

A  third  distinction  is  this :  the  law  treats 
only  cases  which  are  easily  measurable.  I 
have  been  insisting  that  legal  penalties  should 
be  precisely  defined  and  indeed  should  be 
proportional  to  preceding  crime.  But  the 
crime  too  should  be  defined.  The  need  of 
having  its  nature  and  extent  distinctly  for- 
mulated explains,  I  think,  some  of  the  anoma- 
lies in  the  working  of  the  law.  We  are  often 
shocked  to  see  that  wrong^doing  of  a  pecu- 
liarly destructive  sort  is  not  stopped  by  the 
law,  indeed  is  hardly  forbidden.  Gambling 
is  a  desolating  vice,  a  vice  which  more  than 
most  corrodes  the  character.  Its  effect  is 
like  that  of  opium.  An  opium-eater  soon 
loses  interest  in  the  rest  of  life.  His  other 
powers  become  useless  or  unpracticed.  He  is 
absorbed  in  his  drug,  thinks  of  little  else,  and 
finds  it  almost  impossible  to  break  off  the  de- 
tested habit.  So  it  is  with  the  gambler.  A 
drunkard  retains  many  interests.  In  his  lucid 
moments  one  can  talk  with  him  very  much  as 
with  any  one  else.  His  attention  is  ready. 
But  not  so  the  gambler.  To  his  perpetually 
fevered  mind  ordinary  things  have  no  inter- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  67 

est.  More  and  more  he  removes  himself  from 
the  solid  affairs  of  his  fellows,  attaches  him- 
self to  uncertainties,  and  shrivels. 

Now  anything  that  can  so  eat  up  character 
we  should  say  ought  to  be  prevented  by  the 
most  stringent  laws,  and  the  penalties  should 
grow  sterner  according  to  the  gravity  of  the 
matters  with  which  the  gambler  plays.  In 
reality  we  find  a  state  of  things  curiously 
unlike  that  depicted  here  as  desirable.  It 
is  true  there  are  laws  against  gambling, 
laws  occasionally  enforced.  If  a  poor  fellow 
shakes  dice  on  Sunday  and  wins  or  loses  a 
few  dollars,  he  is  Hkely  to  be  seized  by  the 
police  and  to  see  his  name  in  the  court  re- 
ports the  next  day.  But  how  unimportant 
the  whole  affair  is !  Neither  the  gambler 
himseK  —  a  person  probably  already  depraved 
and  little  likely  to  suffer  further  harm  from 
his  silly  amusement —  nor  the  insignificant 
amounts  of  money  involved,  deserve  much 
attention  from  the  law.  Yet  it  is  against 
cases  like  this  that  gambling  laws  for  the 
most  part  operate.  In  its  larger  phases 
gambhng  is  httle  interfered  with.  If  instead 
of  betting  on  something  so  small  as  falling 
dice,  one  bets  on  the  rise  and  fall  of  stocks 


68  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

or  on  the  price  which  wheat  will  reach  some 
months  hence,  and  if  by  such  betting  one 
corners  the  community  in  an  article  essential 
to  its  welfare,  throwing  a  continent  into  con- 
fusion, the  law  will  pay  not  the  slightest  at- 
tention. A  gambHng  house  for  these  larger 
purposes  may  be  built  conspicuously  in  any 
city,  the  sign  "  Stock  Exchange  "  be  set  over 
its  door,  influential  men  be  appointed  its  ofB.- 
cers,  and  the  law  will  protect  it  and  them  as 
it  does  the  churches.  How  infamous  to  for- 
bid gambling  on  a  small  scale  and  almost  to 
encourage  it  on  a  large  ! 

The  reason  for  this  seeming  absurdity  is 
the  one  which  I  have  just  mentioned,  the  dif- 
ficulty of  so  defining  gambling  as  to  attack 
its  pernicious  elements.  For  certain  elements 
enter  into  gambling  which  are  of  extreme 
consequence  to  the  community.  They  are 
not  iniquitous.  In  every  society  they  need  to 
be  fostered.  One  of  them  is  foresight.  To  be 
a  good  gambler,  one  should  be  able  to  take  a 
long  look  ahead,  and  a  swift  look  too.  One 
must  calculate  chances  with  exceptional  pre- 
cision and  rapidity.  Such  power  of  forecast 
is  socially  important.  So,  far  from  being 
checked,  it  should   be  rewarded.     And  can 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  69 

gambling  be  so  defined  as  to  honor  this 
element  while  condemning  hectic  risk  ?  That 
is  difficult.  To  a  slight  extent  it  may  be  done. 
Well-known  games,  in  which  the  element  of 
risk  is  large  and  that  of  foresight  small,  may 
be  forbidden,  and  the  possession  of  imple- 
ments for  such  games  be  made  illegal.  A  tol- 
erable definition  of  this  inferior  sort  of  gam- 
bling can  be  framed.  But  how  define  the  evil 
forms  of  the  larger  gambling  without  includ- 
ing in  the  definition  precious  elements  of 
human  energy  which  should  be  encouraged? 
This  is  a  feat  of  definition  which  no  man  has 
yet  accomplished.  Because  of  these  difficul- 
ties in  marking  out  the  crime,  we  are  prob- 
ably better  off  on  the  whole  if  we  tolerate 
speculative  risks.  The  community  would  prob- 
ably not  reach  so  high  a  level  if  we  should 
attempt  to  shut  out  the  evils  of  what  I  have 
called  the  higher  forms  of  gambHng,  but 
through  bungling  definition  shut  out  also 
elements  vital  to  the  well-being  of  commerce 
itself. 

For  several  years  past  men  in  all  parts  of 
the  country  have  been  trying  to  formulate 
what  they  mean  by  a  trust.  A  trust  is  a  dan- 
gerous organization  of  capital,  such  an  organ- 


70  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

ization  as  will  produce  disastrous  monopoly ; 
and  what  kind  of  organization  is  that  ?  No- 
body knows.  It  is  something  good  to  de- 
nounce. But  when  it  must  be  made  definite 
enough  to  be  proceeded  against  by  the  law, 
we  pause.  Society  could  not  go  on,  were  cap- 
ital forbidden  to  combine.  It  is  only  mono- 
polistic combination  which  requires  a  check, 
^ut  this  is  a  hard  matter  to  define.  State 
after  State  has  attempted  it,  but  the  bad  trusts 
go  on.  There  is  no  possibiHty  of  a  law  until 
the  conditions  and  nature  of  crime  can  be 
exactly  specified. 

How  is  it,  then,  in  the  moral  field  ?  Is  it 
not  equally  important  there  to  have  vices  and 
virtues  defined  ?  On  the  contrary,  by  being 
defined  these  lose  significance.  No  large 
virtue,  and  no  large  vice,  can  be  inclosed  in  a 
definition.  We  ought  to  forgive  those  who 
do  us  wrong.  Well,  just  what  is  meant  by 
forgiveness,  and  to  what  extent  should  we 
forgive  ?  Nobody  can  tell.  Yet  these  are 
not  unimportant  matters.  They  are  the  essen- 
tial points.  Still,  nobody  has  as  yet  been 
able  to  determine  them.  An  instructive  case 
is  recorded  where  the  legal  defining  mind  ap- 
proached the  greatest  of  moral  teachers,  ask- 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  71 

ing  for  an  explanation  of  the  dif&cult  matter 
of  forgiveness.  "  Master,  how  often  shall  my 
brother  sin  against  me  and  I  forgive  him  ? 
Until  seven  times  ?"  How  sensible  the  ques- 
tion !  A  maximum  must  be  fixed,  beyond 
which  forgivable  ofPenses  cannot  go ;  and 
would  not  seven  be  a  generous  point  at 
which  to  fix  it  ?  Our  Lord's  answer  is  almost 
scornful.  "  I  say  not  until  seven  times,  but 
until  seventy  times  seven."  It  is  as  if  he 
had  said,  "  There  is  no  limit.  Let  the  law 
concern  itself  with  such  things.  They  do  not 
belong  to  me.  My  work  is  to  show  how  con- 
duct and  character  may  be  constructed  ;  not 
how  enactment  should  be  drawn.  From  the 
moral  point  of  view,  forgiveness  is  immeasur- 
able." 

Ethical  writers  sometimes  talk  about  duties 
of  perfect  and  imperfect  obligation.  The 
terms  are  not  altogether  fortunate.  But  the 
distinction  is  an  ancient  one,  and  so  well  illus- 
trates my  present  point  that  I  pause  to  explain 
it.  Yesterday  I  borrowed  a  dollar  of  John. 
When  to-day  I  go  to  pay  him,  I  do  not  dis- 
cuss how  much  he  would  like  to  receive.  That 
is  fixed.  I  have  a  direct  obligation  of  pre- 
cisely one  hundred  cents.     If  I  give  him  a 


72  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

hundred  and  ten,  I  am  showing  kindness  or 
treating  him  as  an  object  of  charity ;  I  am 
not  fulfilHng  a  duty.  If  I  offer  but  ninety- 
nine  cents,  something  still  remains  due.  For 
it  is  exactly  one  hundred  cents,  and  nothing 
else,  which  I  owe.  My  duty  is  one  of  perfect, 
i.  e.,  of  precise,  obHgation.  There  are  many 
such  duties.  To  both  individuals  and  the  state, 
we  are  bound  to  perform  a  multitude  of  spe- 
cific acts.  But  such  duties  are,  after  all, 
generally  of  an  inferior  sort.  Those  most 
distinctively  moral  are  of  imperfect,  ^.  e.,  of 
undefined,  obligation.  Morality  deals  with 
infinite  beings  and  makes  infinite  claims.  For 
example,  I  ought  to  be  truthful.  How  truth- 
ful? When  asked  a  question  which  may  be 
answered  by  yes  or  no,  I  must  say  yes,  if  the 
facts  are  as  stated ;  no,  if  they  are  otherwise. 
Does  the  obligation  of  truthfulness  end  here  ? 
Certainly  not.  Falsehood  is  carried  by  sugges- 
tion as  well  as  byword,  and  the  duty  of  veracity 
extends  to  this  also.  And  beyond  this  ?  Yes. 
I  must  be  as  truthful  with  myself  as  with 
others.  I  must  have  truth  in  the  inward 
parts.  Indeed,  each  time  I  am  truthful,  a 
vista  of  possible  new  forms  of  truthfulness  is 
opened  before  me,  so  that  it  would  seem  that 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  73 

I  might  go  on  becoming  forever  more  deli- 
cately truthful.  The  duty  is  infinite;  and 
what  genuinely  moral  duty  is  not  ?  Is  there 
ever  a  possible  limit  to  righteousness?  Be 
benevolent.  How  benevolent  ?  To  the  extent 
of  words,  or  money,  or  coat,  or  cloak  ?  To 
the  extent  of  his  needs  and  your  powers,  -r- 
both  infinite. 

Accordingly  whenever  our  attention  is 
called  to  something  as  a  duty  which  we  per- 
ceive can  be  precisely  stated  and  defined,  we 
ordinarily  experience  for  it  a  slight  sense  of 
contempt.  "  Well  enough  to  be  done,"  we 
think,  "but  it  can  hardly  be  called  a  moral 
obligation."  Brush  your  hair.  Dust  your 
room.  When  you  shove  a  drawer  in,  do  not 
push  it  as  far  as  it  inclines  to  go ;  shove 
it  clear  in.  Complete  your  purpose.  Un- 
doubtedly all  these  matters  pertain  to  good 
morals,  involving  as  they  do  principles  of 
wide  range  in  life.  But  it  is  allegiance  to 
the  principles,  not  performance  of  the  specific 
acts  which  deserves  the  name  of  righteous- 
ness. Though  moral  claims  must  often  be 
specific,  particular,  definite,  they  are  so  only 
as  manifestations  of  principles  which  cannot 
be  measured,  particularized,  and  defined.     In 


74  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

short,  in  all  its  higher  forms  morality  deals 
with  precepts  of  imperfect  obligation ;  while 
the  law  deals  exclusively  with  duties  of  perfect 
obligation,  where  the  nature  of  the  thing  com- 
manded is  exactly  defined.  The  phrases  I  do 
not  altogether  like.  To  talk  of  duties  of  per- 
fect and  imperfect  obligation  puts  the  mind 
on  a  wrong  track,  the  word  imperfect  usually 
conveying  a  suggestion  of  inferiority  rather 
than  eminence.  Duties  defined  and  unde- 
fined I  should  prefer  to  call  them,  duties  of 
infinite  and  of  limited  obligation.  But  all 
these  names  serve  to  bring  out  well  the  dis- 
tinction on  which  I  am  insisting.  The  law 
treats  only  cases  which  are  easily  measurable, 
while  every  truly  moral  command  will  be 
found  to  contain  infinite  implications. 

rx 

The  fourth  point  of  contrast  between  ethics 
and  the  law  sums  up  and  explains  the  pre- 
ceding three.  It  is  this  :  the  aim  of  the  law 
is  the  defense  of  an  already  estabHshed  order. 
Development  is  the  aim  of  moraHty.  No  per- 
son is  at  any  time  all  he  is  capable  of  being. 
From  an  ethical  point  of  view  he  can  never 
be  described,  like  a  finished  thing.     The  case 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  75 

in  which  he  at  any  time  finds  himself  can 
never  be  honored  except  as  a  step  leading  to 
something  else.  On  the  powers  in  him  which 
are  only  possible  and  which  wait  to  be  realized, 
ethics  fixes  attention.  But  the  law  views  men 
in  an  entirely  different  way.  It  takes  them  as  it 
finds  them,  ready-made,  without  much  inquiry 
about  the  processes  of  their  growth.  Finding 
organized  beings  with  already  established  ties 
obtaining  among  them,  the  law  seeks  to  guard 
this  constituted  society  from  interference. 
Each  man  must  be  protected  in  the  exercise  of 
such  rights  as  under  an  order  so  constituted  he 
might  expect.  Of  course,  then,  the  law  must 
treat  all  men  alike.  Not  that  they  are  alike  ; 
there  are  endless  differences  among  them. 
Some  are  much  more  highly  developed  than 
others.  But  the  law  is  not  concerned  with  spe- 
cific differences.  How  men  are  made,  it  does 
not  ask.  Here  they  are.  Having  somehow 
reached  an  average  pattern,  Thomas  is  as  good 
as  John,  Mary  as  Susan,  —  all  claim  equality 
of  treatment.  The  law,  therefore,  knows  no 
persons.  It  knows  only  blank  forms,  human 
beings  in  outhne,  men  and  women  of  a  con- 
ventional pattern  from  which  most  that  lends 
individuality  to  character  is  omitted.     Profes- 


76  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

sedly,  poor  and  rich  are  treated  alike,  learned 
and  ignorant,  strong  and  weak.  The  gener- 
ous, the  poetic,  the  courageous,  the  aspiring 
must  receive  no  favors  which  are  not  also 
open  to  the  niggardly,  the  unimaginative,  the 
timid,  and  the  man  of  hmited  horizon.  Of 
course  in  practice  something  very  different 
results.  The  world  over,  great  talents  grasp 
great  rewards.  Moral  opportunity  does  not 
cease  because  the  law  holds  sway.  But  it  is 
independent  of  it.  Legislation  which  prima- 
rily sought  to  foster  opportunity  would  rightly 
be  reckoned  unjust.  The  law  seeks  to  secure 
a  fair  field  and  no  favor  for  a  multitude  of 
struggling  human  units,  all  of  whom  should 
for  its  purposes  be  regarded  as  of  a  tolerably 
similar  constitution. 

To  protect  men  as  they  stand  is,  therefore, 
the  object  of  the  law,  to  guard  those  defined 
rights  which  turn  a  man  into  a  person.  We 
might  almost  call  "  damage  "  the  sacred  word 
of  the  law,  for  it  is  always  busy  preventing 
each  person  from  being  diminished  by  some 
other.  A  while  ago,  in  speaking  of  the  moral 
vices,  I  said  that  perhaps  the  greatest  of  them 
were  laziness  and  untruthfulness,  and  that  of 
these  the  law  took  no  cognizance.    But  I  was 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  77 

obliged  to  qualify  immediately  by  adding  that 
the  law  would  take  cognizance  so  soon  as 
these  vices  interfered  with  anybody.  This  is 
the  same  as  to  say  that  the  law  studies  the 
worth  of  any  man  not  with  reference  to  him- 
self, but  with  reference  to  some  other  person. 
It  does  not  ask,  "  Is  this  a  good  man  and  how 
can  he  be  made  better  ?  "  but,  "  Is  this  man 
—  fashioned  however  he  may  be  —  doing  any 
harm  to  his  neighbor  ?  "  Legally,  goodness 
and  badness  are  terms  of  external  relationship, 
and  their  degree  is  measured  by  the  mainte- 
nance or  damage  induced  by  them  in  the 
status  quo  of  society.  It  is  no  wonder,  then, 
that  in  every  age  lawyers  have  been  charged 
with  being  conservatives,  uninterested  in  pro- 
gress. That  is  a  danger  incident  to  the  trade. 
Lawyers  of  course  remain  human  beings  — 
often,  I  do  not  doubt,  moral  ones.  In  his 
human  character  a  lawyer  may  be  warmly  in- 
terested in  the  development  of  society  and 
even  in  that  of  the  moral  beings  who  compose 
it.  But  as  a  lawyer  he  must  hold  by  the 
status  quo,  and  the  unquestioning  defense  of 
that  status  quo  is  his  daily  business.  Any- 
thing else  would  be  calamitous  to  the  com- 
munity. 


78  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 


It  is  interesting,  however,  to  observe  how 
inadequate  this  abstract  conception  of  man 
and  this  fixed  organization  of  society  is  found, 
and  how  we  continually  try  to  stretch  the  law 
in  an  ethical  direction.  Such  attempts  have 
never  been  more  frequent  or  earnest  than  in 
our  time.  Indeed,  they  have  been  so  largely 
successful  that  the  very  line  of  distinction 
which  I  have  laid  down  has  begun  to  be 
questioned.  I  might  well  be  challenged  if  I 
should  say  that  the  law  cares  nothing  about 
personal  filth,  but  only  about  social ;  that  it 
regards  filth  only  in  its  likelihood  to  damage 
others  beside  its  producer.  To-day  we  freely 
pass  laws  requiring  tenement  houses  to  pro- 
vide bathrooms,  sanitary  appliances,  and  clean 
entries.  It  is  true  we  profess  to  do  this  for 
fear  typhoid  fever  might  break  out  in  some 
filthy  spot  and  become  a  general  danger. 
We  talk  of  protection  to  the  community ;  but 
the  enthusiasm  which  carries  the  law  is  more 
than  half  a  moral  one,  the  passion  to  furnish 
those  who  live  in  crowded  tenements  condi- 
tions more  favorable  to  noble  living  than  they 
would  otherwise  obtain.     Perhaps  we  should 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  79 

hesitate  to  legislate  directly  for  such  noble 
living  were  we  not  also  legislating  for  the 
common  defense.  But  we  are  glad  to  believe 
that  the  two  aims  coincide. 

Factory  laws  for  fixing  the  hours  of  labor 
for  women  and  children  —  and  even  the 
hours  for  men  in  some  employments  —  furnish 
another  striking  example  of  ethical  legisla- 
tion. But  perhaps  our  laws  have  gone  far- 
thest in  the  moral  direction  in  the  matter  of 
education.  By  what  right  do  we  send  every 
child  to  school?  Do  not  such  laws  —  ideal 
and  expansive,  rather  than  protective  —  aim 
at  the  development  of  imperfect  individual 
souls?  And  is  it  true  that  in  this  case  we 
estimate  the  worth  of  the  person  in  terms  of 
his  relation  to  his  neighbor  ?  Is  it  not  rather 
that  we  think  each  man  has  a  right  to  an 
education  for  his  own  sake  ?  This  is  often 
denied.  An  ignorant  man  is  a  danger  to  the 
community,  it  is  said.  Ignorant  men  vote. 
For  the  safety  of  the  existing  order,  voters 
should  be  able  at  least  to  read,  write,  and  per- 
form simple  sums  in  arithmetic.  But  who 
defends  education  laws  in  this  way  without 
secretly  congratulating  himself  that  he  is, 
after  all,  developing  human  beings?     Press- 


80  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

ing  a  little  beyond  the  point  here  described, 
the  subterfuge  becomes  patent.  High  schools 
are  estabhshed.  Every  boy  and  girl  in  New 
England  has  a  chance  at  some  sort  of  high 
school  training.  Why  ?  Is  a  voter  who  is 
not  a  high  school  graduate  a  dangerous  crea- 
ture ?  No ;  but  we  must  not  draw  the  lines 
too  sharply.  Give  all  a  chance.  The  move- 
ment is  in  the  general  direction  of  protecting 
the  community,  and  it  may  as  well  be  liber- 
ally interpreted.  Who  does  not  see  that  the 
school  laws  have  a  moral  as  well  as  a  legal 
intent  ?  Yet  legal  justification  is  still  re- 
quired ;  for  when  we  ask  whether  public  high 
schools  shall  teach  Greek  and  Latin,  there  is 
hesitation.  A  non-Greek  or  non-Latin  voter 
is  obviously  not  a  public  danger.  And  ac- 
cordingly in  providing  these  languages  we 
appear  to  be  somewhat  straining  a  point.  A 
good  many  towns  do  not  feel  justified  in 
maintaining  these  languages  by  general  tax. 
The  line  must  be  drawn  somewhere  and  may 
as  well  be  drawn  at  their  exclusion.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  all  our  Western  States  main- 
tain university  education  through  general  tax- 
ation, unquestionably  aiming  at  developing 
moral  individuals  and  not  simply  protecting 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  81 

the  community.  Yet  here,  too,  there  is  color- 
able legal  excuse.  The  established  order  of 
society  will  be  more  intelligent  and  workable 
if  it  contains  a  percentage  of  highly  trained 
men. 

These  examples  serve  to  show  how  far  from 
firm  the  line  separating  the  law  from  ethics 
has  in  our  time  become.  I  bring  them  forward 
to  break  down  the  rigid  distinction  which  I 
myself  set  up.  If  that  distinction  is  held  as 
anything  more  than  a  general  tendency  of 
contrast,  it  misrepresents  the  facts.  The  so- 
cialistic demands  of  the  last  twenty  years 
have  carried  morality  far  over  into  the  legal 
field.  The  socially  protective  aim  and  the 
individually  enlarging  aim  have  been  approxi- 
mated. For  the  law  is  no  field  apart  from 
other  human  interests.  Subtly  and  fully,  if 
slowly,  it  feels  the  influence  of  the  ideals 
which  sway  a  community  and  adopts  them 
into  its  structure.  And  though  we  grant 
that  the  law  in  our  time  is  not  exclusively 
occupied  with  guarding  completed  men  against 
damage,  it  has  not  abandoned  this  its  special 
office.  It  holds  the  results  of  civilization 
secure.  By  moral  experience,  reflection,  and 
criticism,  man  reaches  a  certain  stage  of  devel- 


82  TEE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

opment.  The  rights  and  duties  appropriate 
to  such  a  stage  are  then  codified  into  the  law, 
while  the  moral  life  goes  on  expanding  itself 
to  finer  and  wider  issues.  Yet  in  thus  accept- 
ing into  its  charge  the  approved  moral  ideals 
of  a  community,  the  law  is  still  hampered  by 
the  three  conditions  already  named  :  it  must 
define  its  crime,  define  its  penalty,  and  impose 
that  penalty  in  direct  proportion  to  criminal- 
ity. And  all  these  conditions  somewhat  re- 
strict the  socialistic  endeavor  to  push  the  law 
over  into  the  field  of  morality. 

XI 

To  sum*  up,  then,  the  long  discussion :  I 
have  attempted  to  determine  the  field  of 
ethics  by  asking  how  far  it  coincides  with 
that  of  the  law.  Similar  as  in  many  respects 
the  two  fields  are,  they  show  a  fundamental 
difference  in  the  way  their  common  material 
of  conduct  and  character  is  presented.  In 
view  of  the  careful  explanations  already  given, 
this  difference  may  now  be  compacted  into  a 
single  word.  The  law  is  inadequate  to  the 
moral  demand  because  it  is  too  objective.  By 
it  the  moral  agent  is  not  regarded  primarily 
in  himself,  subjectively,  i.  e.,  with  reference  to 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  88 

the  effects  which  his  conduct  may  produce  on 
his  own  growth  and  welfare.  He  is  regarded 
objectively,  i.  e.,  in  relation  to  others,  and  is 
accounted  good  or  bad  according  as  he  dam- 
ages or  protects  other  members  of  his  com- 
munity. And  this  objectivity  of  the  law  will 
oblige  us  to  look  elsewhere  for  a  full  exhibit 
of  the  moral  life.  We  must  supplement  the 
ethical  deficiency  of  the  law.  We  must  dis- 
cover how  the  moral  agent  may  be  good  in 
himself.  To  be  good  in  himself,  he  will  need 
also  to  be  good  objectively  and  not  to  inter- 
fere with  the  good  of  others.  But  we  cannot 
make  this  good  in  relation  to  others  the  sole 
test  of  goodness.  It  is  plain  that  for  com- 
plete goodness  we  must  pass  beyond  the 
bounds  of  the  law  into  some  other  field  where 
the  verb  ought  is  still  appHcable,  —  some  field, 
therefore,  whose  laws,  unlike  those  of  the 
descriptive  sciences,  embody  ideals,  —  but  one, 
nevertheless,  in  which  a  subjective  estimate 
obtains  so  that  the  object  of  judgment  is  re- 
garded as  having  a  worth  within  itself  and 
not  merely  outside  itself.  In  short,  we  must 
turn  to  the  field  of  aesthetics,  the  region  of 
beauty.  For  as  I  understand  it,  each  beau- 
tiful object  is  regarded  as  essentially  a  thing 


84  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

of  worth.  Its  relations  to  other  thmgs  are 
not  alone  considered,  as  they  seem  to  be  by 
the  law,  but  the  important  matters  are  its  re- 
lations to  itself.  The  field  of  beauty,  accord- 
ingly, excellently  supplements  that  of  the  law 
and  holds  out  good  hopes  of  showing  us  what 
we  are  seeking  —  the  character  of  the  moral 
being  and  the  nature  of  that  which  we  call 
his  conduct. 

xn 

In  closing,  perhaps  a  word  more  is  needed 
in  regard  to  one  of  the  two  objections  already 
considered.  As  a  means  of  discriminating 
the  field  of  law  from  that  of  ethics,  I  men- 
tioned that  it  was  often  held  that  the  law 
looked  on  outer  consequences,  while  ethics 
looked  for  the  inner  motive.  I  said  that  I 
could  not  fully  accept  this  statement,  although 
it  called  attention  to  an  important  point. 
What  that  point  is  we  can  now  see.  The 
law  certainly  does  regard  intention.  No  crime 
was  ever  brought  into  court  to  which  ques- 
tions of  intention  would  be  altogether  foreign. 
The  statement  is  not,  then,  strictly  true.  Yet 
what  is  central  in  this  line  of  discrimination 
is  both  true  and  important.     While  intention 


ETHICS  AND  THE  LAW  86 

is  taken  into  account,  it  is  studied  only  in  its 
bearing  on  somebody  else.  Everything  in 
the  case,  the  intention  itself  included,  is 
treated  objectively.  The  law  does  not  study 
how  far  the  intention  is  injurious  to  the  man 
himself. 


REFERENCES    ON   THE   RELATIONS    OF   LAW 
AND    ETHICS 

Hobbes'  Leviathan,  pt.  ii. 
Bentham's  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  six. 
Austin's  Jurisprudence,  lect.  v. 
Holland's  Jurisprudence,  pt.  i.  ch.  iii. 
Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Right,  §  36. 
Holmes'  The  Common  Law,  lect.  iv. 
Stephen's  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity,  p.  159. 
Sidgwick's  Politics,  ch.  xiii. 

Sidgwick's  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  ii.  and  bk.  ii.  ch.  v. 
Fowler's  Principles  of  Morals,  voL  iL  p.  146. 
Mezes'  Ethics,  ch.  xiii. 
Paulsen's  System  of  Ethics,  ch.  ix. 

Hibben's  Ethics  and  Jurisprudence,  Journal  of  Ethics,  Jan., 
1894. 


m 

ETHICS  AND  ^ESTHETICS 


in 

ETHICS    AND    ESTHETICS 


^Esthetics,  like  ethics,  is  a  science  of  worth 
—  estimates.  The  connoisseur  does  not  de- 
scribe his  objects.  No  more  than  the  morahst 
does  he  view  them  as  ultimate  and  uncriti- 
cisable  facts.  He  judges  whether  they  are 
what  they  ought  to  be,  and  assesses  them  as 
excellent  according  as  they  more  or  less  com- 
pletely embody  ideals.  With  nothing  else  is 
he  concerned  than  with  the  formation  and 
embodiment  of  ideals  of  beauty ;  just  as  the 
morahst's  whole  work  is  to  decide  what  ideals 
of  goodness  should  shape  a  given  piece  of 
conduct  and  whether  these  have  or  have  not 
shaped  it.  The  methods  of  the  two  sciences 
are  so  similar  that  one  naturally  looks  for 
similarity  of  result.  The  good  and  the  beau- 
tiful may  be  regarded  as  but  different  names 
for  a  single  thing.     More   commonly,   per- 


90  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

haps,  it  is  to  outward  objects  that  we  attri- 
bute beauty;  or  if  to  persons  also,  to  per- 
sons in  their  physical  or  visible  aspects.  But 
the  limitation  is  arbitrary  and  unnecessary. 
Beauty  may  easily  be  carried  over  to  affairs 
of  conduct  and  character ;  and  when  so  car- 
ried, will  it  not  precisely  coincide  with  what 
we  mean  by  goodness?  That  it  will  is  an 
opinion  which  has  repeatedly  been  held  by 
students  of  ethics. 

It  was  the  ancient  opinion,  the  one  com- 
mon when  ethics  first  appeared  among  that 
marvelous  people,  the  Greeks.  The  Greek 
way  of  describing  a  person  as  all  he  ought  to 
be  was  to  call  him  KaXos  kov  dya^d?,  beauti- 
ful and  good.  But  even  this  marked  too  great 
a  separation.  Beauty  and  goodness  must  be 
no  distinct  elements,  tied  together  by  a  con- 
junction. "  And  "  must  be  conceived  as  a 
conjunction  of  apposition,  and  the  whole  com- 
pound phrase  represent  but  a  single  idea.  Its 
different  parts  were  accordingly  melted  to- 
gether. The  word  KaXoKctya^ds  was  coined 
to  indicate  the  man  in  whom  goodness  reaches 
its  suitable  embodiment.  This  opinion,  instinc- 
tive in  every  Greek,  was  adopted  by  Plato,  — 
of  all  Greek  philosophers  the  one  of  profound- 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  91 

est  moral  insight.  Nobody  has  intertwined 
the  beautiful  and  the  good  more  exquisitely 
than  he.  He  cannot  imagine  the  one  divorced 
from  the  other.  Wherever  beauty  appears 
in  the  world,  goodness  is  indicated  ;  wherever 
goodness  enters,  it  announces  itself  as  beauty. 
But  this  view,  though  properly  enough  con- 
nected with  the  name  of  Plato,  its  conscious 
advocate,  was  one  which  had  always  shaped 
profoundly  the  whole  structure  of  Greek  life. 
These  judgments  about  the  substantial  iden- 
tity of  the  beautiful  and  the  good  were  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  Greeks.  Soon  after 
ethics  arose  in  England,  the  doctrine  appears. 
Shaftesbury,  in  attacking  Hobbes,  thinks 
Hobbes  would  have  been  saved  from  his 
errors  if  he  had  perceived  this  alHance  of 
the  good  and  the  beautiful.  He  beheves  we 
shall  more  easily  make  men  comprehend  what 
we  mean  by  goodness  if,  instead  of  speaking 
of  the  moral  man,  we  speak  of  the  connois- 
seur or  virtuoso.  That  is  what  each  of  us 
should  seek  to  be.  The  artistic  connoisseur 
is  one  who  has  acquired  such  sensitiveness  to 
beauty  that  long  before  he  verifies  the  reasons 
for  preferring  one  picture  to  another  he  has 
instinctively  made  his  preference.    No  man  is 


92  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

a  good  man  who  has  not  acquired  a  similar 
connoisseurship  in  morals  and  has  the  in- 
stinctive passion  for  righteousness  which  the 
virtuoso  feels  for  beautiful  objects. 

Once  again,  this  time  in  Germany,  the 
union  of  goodness  and  beauty  found  its  cham- 
pion. Just  after  Kant  had  imparted  his 
mighty  impulse  to  intellectual  and  moral  sci- 
ence, Schiller  pointed  out,  in  his  "  ^sthetische 
Briefe,"  or.  Letters  on  the  Nature  of  the  Beau- 
tiful, that  without  discipline  in  the  perception 
of  beauty,  an  important  part  of  scientific  and 
moral  education  cannot  be  had. 

But  to  make  out  a  connection  between 
goodness  and  beauty  it  is  hardly  necessary  to 
resort  to  the  teachings  of  philosophers.  Our 
ordinary  words  descriptive  of  righteousness  are 
largely  borrowed  from  aesthetics.  We  speak  of 
what  is  good  as  fair,  fit,  fine,  clean,  square,  — 
aesthetic  terms  aU.  What  is  bad  is  ugly,  hide- 
ous, repulsive,  coarse,  unsuitable.  Every  one 
would  understand  these  bad  words  as  moral 
words;  yet  primarily  they  indicate  only  absence 
of  beauty.  The  testimony  of  all  languages 
is  the  same.  Describing  in  any  of  them  the 
beautiful  and  the  good,  the  same  word  will 
be  found  indiscriminately  to  fit  either. 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  93 

And  this  testimony  is  confirmed  in  our  own 
experience.  Every  one  of  us  finds  moral  en- 
noblement in  the  presence  of  beauty.  Who 
of  us  can  come  from  a  symphony  by  Beetho- 
ven, from  a  portrait  by  Watts,  from  Shelley's 
"Skylark"  or  Keats's  "Nightingale,"  and 
think  mean  thoughts,  be  envious  of  our  neigh- 
bor, or  give  ourselves  up  to  gross  imaginings  ? 
Badness  has  become  difficult.  A  power  ex- 
pulsive of  evil  resides  in  the  beauty  we  have 
been  contemplating,  and  sweeps  us  away  from 
that  preoccupation  with  self  which  is  the  root 
of  vileness.  The  beautiful  object  lends  us  its 
dignity.  If  I  were  a  father  and  were  send- 
ing my  boy  from  home,  I  should  tremble  at 
his  departure  if  I  knew  that  he  had  no  re- 
gard for  beauty.  A  coarse,  dull  boy,  to  whom 
beauty  makes  no  appeal,  lacks  protection  at 
critical  moments.  Many  times  have  I  been 
saved  from  wrong-doing  through  the  thought 
of  its  unseemliness.  I  have  reflected  how  in- 
congruous it  would  be,  what  an  ugly  and  re- 
pulsive person  I  must  afterwards  appear,  and 
not  to  others  only  but  to  myself.  Considera- 
tion of  the  ugliness  which  vice  possesses  has 
often,  I  dare  say,  held  me  back  when  the 
moral  call  had  lost  its  power. 


94  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

n 

Up  to  this  point  all  I  have  sought  has  been 
to  make  the  bare  fact  of  kinship  plain.  This 
fact  must  now  be  acknowledged.  Testimony 
of  every  sort,  gather  it  where  we  may,  shows 
that  the  human  mind  has  always  identified  — 
or  tended  to  identify — the  field  of  beauty 
and  the  field  of  goodness.  But  to  settle  the 
fact  is  not  enough.  As  ethical  students  we 
must  ask  for  reasons.  I  pass  on,  therefore, 
to  inquire  why  it  is  that  the  beautiful  and  the 
good  have  such  close  af&nity.  What  is  there 
in  the  nature  of  beauty  which  can  so  fortify 
the  spirit  of  goodness  ? 

For  any  adequate  answer  it  would  be  ne- 
cessary to  analyze  the  entire  significance  of 
beauty.  We  should  need  to  determine  ex- 
haustively what  makes  an  object  beautiful; 
and  that  would  carry  us  into  intricate  aesthetic 
discussions  for  which  I  have  Httle  competence. 
The  region  is  an  uncertain  one.  ^Esthetic 
explorers  are  by  no  means  agreed  in  their 
accounts  of  beauty.  Almost  everybody  who 
has  tried  to  track  the  shy  thing  has  been 
obHged  to  acknowledge  that  it  finally  takes 
covert  in  mystery.     Beauty  probably  contains 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  95 

elements  not  altogether  capable  of  verifica- 
tion. Mystery  seems  an  essential  part  of  it. 
It  is  easy  to  find  common  qualities  possessed 
by  aU  beautiful  things,  but  hard  to  be  sure 
that  we  have  enumerated  them  all.  I  shall 
not  attempt  anything  so  ambitious.  Here,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  law,  my  interest  is  centred 
in  ethics.  I  pay  attention  to  other  subjects 
only  so  far  as  I  can  hope  that  from  them 
light  may  be  reflected  on  my  own  matters. 
My  method,  therefore,  will  be  to  select  some 
well-known  object  of  beauty,  to  observe  its 
more  notable  features,  to  mark  how  far  these 
are  found  in  other  beautiful  objects,  and  also 
how  far  they  are  discoverable  in  things  called 
good.  This  will  give  no  complete  exhibit  of 
beauty.  But  it  will  make  us  familiar  with 
certain  constant  traits  of  both  beauty  and 

goodness. 

in 

In  seeking  for  a  beautiful  object  which  I 
may  fairly  assume  to  be  widely  known,  what 
can  I  select  better  than  the  wonderful  bronze 
memorial  which  stands  on  Boston  Common 
opposite  the  State  House?  All  of  us  are 
familiar  with  it,  —  the  Shaw  Monument  —  and 
we  all  feel  the  subHmity  of  its  motive.    It 


96  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

represents  a  subject  race  moving  toward  free- 
dom, seeking  that  freedom  by  its  own  exer- 
tions, yet  under  the  guidance  of  a  people 
more  developed  than  itself.  This  complicated 
and  exalted  motive  is  made  by  the  artist  to 
address  the  eye.  As  a  work  of  art  his  picture 
appeals  to  us  not  merely  through  its  senti- 
ment, but  by  the  entanglement  of  this  with 
certain  experiences  of  vision.  Visual  pleasures 
of  a  peculiar  sort  are  made  to  fortify  patriotic 
emotion.  What,  then,  are  these  visual  plea- 
sures and  how  are  they  adjusted  to  stir  our 
sense  of  sublimity? 

First  there  is  rhythm.  This  multitude  —  a 
dozen  or  more  in  the  foreground,  suggestions 
of  an  indefinite  troop  behind  —  is  no  mere 
multitude.  It  is  bound  together  by  harmony 
of  answering  lines  and  gives  to  the  eye  such 
concord  as  measured  verses  give  the  ear. 
Then  there  is  its  typical  character.  These  men 
are  negroes.  The  strange  and  half -formed 
faces,  the  large  and  awkward  feet  belong  only 
to  one  race.  There  is  no  feature  which  is 
not  distinctive  of  a  specific  people,  and  all  the 
kinds  of  man  which  could  enter  into  a  racial 
army  are  here  represented.  Here  is  the  drum- 
mer boy,  young,  eager  for  the  fray,  delighting 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  97 

in  adventure.  Here  the  man  of  vigorous 
years,  performing  his  duty  with  cheerful 
stoutness,  not  thinking  too  much  about  it  or 
himself.  And  here  the  aged  man,  whose 
great  opportunity  has  come  after  a  life  of 
waiting. 

Inclusive,  therefore,  as  the  piece  is,  we  feel 
it  to  be  one,  one  however  minutely  its  details 
are  inspected.  How  united,  for  example,  are 
its  Hues  of  motion.  The  end  which  this  race 
seeks  is  not  yet  attained.  But  half-men  yet, 
their  goal  is  ampler  manhood.  It  lies  ahead, 
and  toward  it  every  line  converges.  To  these 
resistless  marchers  those  words  of  Shakespeare 
apply  by  which  he  described  the  minutes  of 
our  life:  "In  ceaseless  toil  all  forward  do 
contend."  Everything  here  contends  for- 
ward. The  very  slope  of  the  muskets,  though 
never  allowed  to  become  mechanical  through 
parallelism,  beats  out  the  same  reiterated  im- 
pression—  the  impression  of  onward  move- 
ment. There  is  no  portion  of  the  figures  too 
unimportant  for  the  artist  to  have  studied 
with  this  in  view.  He  has  related  his  sol- 
diers' legs,  has  harmonized  their  feet ;  and  as 
these  rise  on  the  toes,  all  their  ungainly  curves 
combine   to   emphasize   the   forward   swing. 


98  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

Spontaneous  as  all  appears,  not  an  ill-adjusted 
heel  can  be  discovered,  no  part  which  is  not 
in  some  way  called  to  make  concord  with  its 
fellow  part. 

And  if  there  are  features  of  the  composition 
which  might  at  a  first  glance  seem  to  jar  its 
chief  hnes,  these  will  be  found  on  closer  study 
to  confirm  the  ocular  argument.  Thrown 
out  a  little  from  the  rest  —  they  a  troop  of 
trudging  negroes,  he  the  most  refined  of 
white  men  —  sits  an  officer  on  his  horse.  The 
horse  is  lightly  reined,  and  the  harsh  curve 
of  his  neck  and  body  breaks  the  hnes  of  the 
piece  and  throws  this  part  of  the  composi- 
tion out  of  full  concord  with  the  surround- 
ings. But  is  not  the  detachment  needed? 
Does  it  not  reinforce  both  thought  and  visual 
pleasure  ?  Contrast  is  involved  in  the  subject, 
and  perhaps  this  jarring  of  the  dominant  lines 
heightens  their  effectiveness.  And  then  how 
beautifully  the  multitude  is  once  more  united 
and  its  community  of  aim  displayed  in  the 
floating  Victory  above !  Hardly  noticed  by 
the  moving  figures,  she  sweeps  over  them  in 
her  traihng  robe,  welding  all  together  and 
assuring  their  common  end. 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  99 

IV 

When  we  try  to  sum  up  our  general  impres- 
sion of  the  beauty  of  this  monument,  I  think 
it  will  be  found  in  its  exceeding  harmony. 
In  it  there  is  nothing  superfluous  and  no- 
thing lacking.  That  is  its  striking  character- 
istic. If  any  doubts  visit  our  minds  about  its 
perfect  beauty,  they  take  the  form  of  pointing 
to  something  in  it  which  does  not  quite  go 
with  the  rest.  Is  the  figure  of  Victory  rather 
long  ?  That  is  to  ask  whether  it  is  truly  pro- 
portioned to  its  surroundings.  Does  it  attract 
attention  to  itself,  or  fix  attention  on  the 
whole  composition  ?  We  may  think  the  horse 
of  Colonel  Shaw  a  little  too  natural,  and  con- 
demn him  for  backing  too  much  as  a  real 
horse  would.  If  so,  we  judge  that  the  lines 
of  the  creature  detach  themselves  too  palpa- 
bly from  the  rest  of  the  composition  and  do 
not  assist,  as  they  should,  to  confirm  human 
action.  That  is,  in  criticising  the  piece  and 
deciding  whether  it  is  singularly  beautiful  or 
a  worthy  work  with  blemishes,  we  scrutinize 
its  concord  and  ask  how  fully  it  is  organic, 
whether  each  part  in  it  is  demanded  by  every 
other  part.     If  nothing  capricious  appears,  if 


100  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

the  single  portions,  however  minute,  have 
been  dictated  by  the  law  of  the  whole,  then 
of  course  we  count  it  beautiful.  If  we  think 
we  can  detect  any  portion  which  sticks  out, 
hangs  off  from  the  rest,  and  claims  attention 
for  itself,  then  we  say  that  in  this  respect  it 
fails. 

But  is  it  true  that  no  one  can  enjoy  the 
Shaw  Monument  without  going  through  some 
such  analysis  of  its  beauty  as  I  have  given 
here?  Far  from  it;  such  analysis  is  quite  as 
likely  to  hinder  the  enjoyment  as  to  help. 
We  have  approached  the  matter  as  students 
of  beauty,  trying  to  bring  its  elements  dis- 
tinctly into  consciousness.  But  that  which 
makes  a  beautiful  work  of  art  most  beautiful 
is  that  it  calls  for  no  distinguishing  conscious- 
ness. The  separate  parts  are  not  specifically 
observed.  The  total  makes  a  single  impres- 
sion. The  work  of  art  appeals  not  to  intel- 
lectual verification.  It  reaches  the  unity 
which  should  characterize  it  only  when  it  can 
be  grasped  at  once  by  momentary  feeling. 
So  long  as  it  is  necessary  to  go  over  it  piece- 
meal and  say,  "  This  single  part  accords  with 
that  single  part  and  with  the  other  single  part," 
we  may  be  sure  the  result  is  flabby.     If  the 


ETHICS  AND  AESTHETICS  101 

work  were  really  coherent,  it  would  say  so  at 
a  glance.  The  crowds  who  pass  before  that 
august  bronze  and  feel  the  sting  of  its  beauty 
do  not  know  that  they  are  impressed  by  con- 
gruent features,  rhythmic  figures,  almost  par- 
allel muskets,  lines  of  uplifted  heels,  and  con- 
verging curves.  With  no  such  things  are  they 
concerned.  To  notice  these  is  to  disparage  the 
total  beauty.  By  the  artist  these  things  are 
studied  before  the  beauty  is  born ;  by  the 
spectator,  when  the  thrill  of  it  is  a  little  passed 
by. 

We  may  probably  conclude,  then,  without 
search  for  supplemental  elements,  that  this 
principle  of  organic  wholeness  is  a  central 
characteristic  of  the  beautiful  object  we  have 
been  examining.  And  is  it  not  also  of  beauty 
everywhere  ?  In  a  beautiful  piece  of  music 
there  are  no  accidents.  Everything  falls  there 
by  appointment,  nothing  by  mere  happening. 
The  whole  demands  every  note  that  sounds, 
and  no  phrase  could  have  differed  from  what 
it  is.  The  case  is  the  same  with  beautiful 
writing.  When  our  essay  or  story  turns  out 
badly,  it  is  because  we  have  put  in  matters 
which  were  unnecessary  or  have  omitted  what 
the  reader  would  really  need  to  know.     The 


102  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

parts  straggle  or  do  not  go  entirely  well  to- 
gether, and  in  consequence  the  piece  is  not 
integral,  soHd,  firm  in  texture.  It  is  true  my 
examples  have  thus  far  heen  drawn  from  the 
field  of  the  fine  arts,  —  that  is,  from  beauty 
humanly  constructed.  But  where  beauty  is 
an  affair  of  nature  and  not  of  conscious  con- 
struction, its  principle  is  the  same.  In  a 
beautiful  human  body  "  head  with  foot  hath 
private  amity."  In  calHng  a  landscape  beau- 
tiful, I  mean  that  it  possesses  such  harmony 
of  lines  and  colors  as  would  have  been  placed 
there  by  a  conscious  artist.  Its  easy  whole- 
ness is  just  what  an  artist  labors  to  produce. 

V 

Let  it  be  agreed  that  wholeness  in  the 
sense  in  which  it  is  here  defined,  organic 
wholeness,  is  essential  to  beauty.  But  this  is 
no  less  true  of  a  good  deed.  At  the  very 
heart  of  moral  excellence  is  the  aim  at  organic 
wholeness.  Goodness  at  its  height  we  call 
holiness.  The  root  of  the  moral  and  aesthetic 
words  is  the  same.  The  holy  man  is  the 
whole  man ;  the  sinner  the  fragmentary  one. 
The  sinner  is  not  in  accord  with  himself.  He 
does  this  instant  what  he  is  ashamed  of  the 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  103 

next ;  or  if  not  the  next  instant,  then  the  next 
year.  His  endeavors  of  to-day  dislocate  those 
of  the  coming  week.  The  holy  man  is  he  who 
does  to-day  what  he  will  approve  to-morrow, 
next  week,  next  year,  to  all  eternity.  He  is 
at  one  with  himself,  a  total  being.  Rightly  we 
call  him  a  man  of  integrity,  a  harmonious 
nature,  a  balanced  soul.  Such  phrases  we 
have  seen  have  their  origin  in  the  aesthetic 
field. 

This  aesthetic  mode  of  judgment  helpfully 
clarifies  much  in  ethics  which  otherwise 
would  remain  obscure.  We  speak  of  the 
sinner  as  a  dissolute  or  dissipated  person  —  a 
man  breaking  up,  going  to  pieces,  one  whose 
personal  character  will  gradually  disappear. 
"  He  rots  to  nothing  at  the  next  great  thaw." 
Shaftesbury  thought  this  the  universal  and 
distinctive  mark  of  vice,  which  he  accordingly 
proposed  to  define  as  solutio  continui,  the 
breaking  up  of  wholeness.  If  we  take  any 
cheap  and  ordinary  vice,  I  think  we  shall  find 
much  confirmation  of  his  view.  When  I  went 
to  dinner  to-day,  I  had  a  voracious  appetite, 
and  there  was  something  on  the  table  I  was 
particularly  fond  of.  It  had  never  agreed 
with  me  ;  that  I  knew.     But  I  did  not  care. 


104  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

I  wanted  it,  and  I  let  my  desire  loose.  That 
was  the  vice  of  gluttony ;  and  in  precisely 
what  did  it  consist  ?  Is  eating  wrong  ?  Not 
at  all.  A  man  must  eat  if  he  would  live. 
And  is  it  wrong  to  enjoy  food?  Only  the 
ascetic  will  say  so.  Healthy  men  and  women 
frankly  count  the  pleasures  of  the  table 
among  the  minor  blessings  of  life.  Where, 
then,  runs  the  line  which  parts  the  vice  of 
gluttony  from  the  pleasure  of  eating  ?  It  lies 
in  taking  the  desire  as  an  independent  matter, 
as  if  desire  for  food  had  no  relation  to  any- 
thing else.  The  holy  man  eats  as  the  sinner 
eats,  enjoying  his  food  no  less  than  does  the 
glutton.  But  the  holy  man,  while  he  enjoys 
his  food,  enjoys  too  his  business,  his  walking, 
his  benefiting  his  fellow  men ;  and  enjoys 
all  these  as  parts  of  one  another  and  as  they 
help  to  constitute  a  worthy  life.  He  will  not 
allow  one  factor  to  break  that  wholeness.  No 
disproportionate  attention  shall  be  given  to 
this  or  that.  Each  element  of  his  life  shaU 
be  tested  by  its  ability  to  assist  the  other  ele- 
ments. He  gets  his  victory  over  the  momen- 
tary impulse  by  surveying  it  in  relation  to 
the  whole.  Of  everything  that  can  enter  into 
that  whole  without  causing  impediment  he  is 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  105 

unashamed.  But  he  lets  no  moment  stand 
by  itself,  no  passion  stand  by  itself,  no  intel- 
lectual interest  even ;  nothing  is  abstract,  sep- 
arate. All  are  filled  with  mutual  relation- 
ships.    The  good  man  has 

His  words  and  works,  and  fashion  too, 
All  of  a  piece. 

And  this  expression  in  each  petty  part  of  the 
spirit  of  wholeness  begets  the  good  man's 
dignity. 

Why  then  should  we  not  call  the  good  man 
the  beautiful  man  ?  We  should,  and  should 
find  the  vicious  man  repulsive.  How  ridicu- 
lous to  exult  over  the  harmonies  of  our  pic- 
tures, our  clothing,  our  furniture,  to  praise 
our  jugs  and  tables  because  their  several  parts 
accord,  and  not  perceive  the  ugliness  of  our 
own  characters,  where  traits  do  not  go  to- 
gether, but  hang  apart  or  clash.  We  really 
ought  to  reckon  the  good  man  the  most  beau- 
tiful object  on  earth.  No  artist  accomplishes 
a  result  so  subtle,  complex,  and  freshly  ad- 
justed as  he.  He  seems  to  show  us  that  the 
beautiful  and  the  good  are  but  two  names 
for  a  single  thing;  and  to  make  plain  the 
wisdom  of  Plato,  Shaftesbury,  and  Schiller 
when  they  tell  us  that  the  shortest  way  to 


106  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

comprehend  goodness  and  the  surest  way  to 
incorporate  it  in  our  lives  is  to  disciphne  our- 
selves in  the  appreciation  of  beauty. 

VI 
Much  as  there  is  which  points  in  this  direc- 
tion, I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to  facts  of  an 
opposite  nature.  Artists  are  not  usually  the 
sternest  morahsts.  But  something  like  this 
ought  to  be  true  if  the  conclusions  to  which 
we  have  gradually  come  are  altogether  cor- 
rect. Devotees  of  beauty  should  be  devotees 
of  goodness.  Yet  our  common  expectation  is 
the  reverse.  A  person  of  high  artistic  tem- 
perament is  excused  for  many  small  vices. 
We  do  not  make  the  same  moral  demands  of 
him  as  of  others.  One  constituted  so,  we 
think,  will  be  exposed  to  double  temptation. 
In  every  period  of  the  world's  history  moral 
leaders  have  looked  askance  on  beauty.  Even 
among  the  Greeks,  the  Stoics  showed  distrust. 
The  Epicureans  were  frank  admirers  of  beauty 
but  the  Stoics  set  little  store  by  it.  Plato 
himself  excludes  the  poets  from  his  state.  In 
Christian  times  devout  opposition  to  beauty 
has  been  commoner  and  more  pronounced. 
It  was  involved  in  monasticism.     It  set  Pari- 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  107 

tans  to  destroying  images,  pictures,  and  many 
of  the  adornments  of  life.  It  brought  the 
Quakers  to  insist  on  plainness  and  to  banish 
from  their  homes  and  churches  every  species 
of  fine  art.  And  how  can  we  say  that  the 
beautiful  and  the  good  are  in  reality  one 
and  the  same  thing  when  those  most  impas- 
sioned for  goodness  become  ipso  facto  foes 
of  the  beautiful?  Indeed,  I  might  again 
appeal  to  personal  experience.  I  pointed  out 
a  while  ago  how  often  at  crises  of  our  lives 
the  sense  of  beauty  comes  to  us  bearing  a 
kind  of  protection.  And  this  is  undeniable. 
But  there  comes  also,  sometimes,  an  envy  of 
the  stolid  and  the  rude.  We  are  exposed  to 
a  hundred  temptations  from  which  a  less  sen- 
sitive nature  is  exempt.  Wisely  does  Tenny- 
son say  that  "  the  passionate  heart  of  the 
poet  is  whirled  into  folly  and  vice."  And 
though  few  of  us  are  fully  poets,  most  of  us 
can  verify  in  ourselves  what  are  the  special 
dangers  to  which  a  poetic  temperament  is 
exposed. 

Evidently,  then,  the  fields  are  not  quite 
conterminous  —  the  fields  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  good.  Nearly  allied  as  they  are,  each 
depending  largely  on  the  other,  the  bounds  of 


108  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

the  one  do  not  lie  precisely  where  he  those  of 
the  other.  Beauty  and  duty  may  sound  ahke, 
but  from  the  beginning  they  are  spelled  dif- 
ferently. In  parting  off  ethics  from  the  law, 
we  had  to  deal  with  distinctions  of  a  subtle 
sort,  subtler  than  were  necessary  for  separat- 
ing ethics  from  the  descriptive  sciences.  But 
it  is  far  harder  to  sunder  ethics  from  aesthet- 
ics than  from  the  law.  I  find  it  impossible  to 
trace  a  single  clear  line  of  demarcation.  But 
if  I  cannot  altogether  separate  the  two  fields, 
I  can  at  least  show  how  a  different  point  of 
view  controls  the  mind  of  him  who  speaks  of 
the  beautiful  and  him  who  speaks  of  the  good. 
The  two  may  be  surveying  the  same  matter, 
but  each  perceives  it  under  a  special  aspect. 
What  these  contrasted  points  of  view  are,  I 
must   now  endeavor  step   by  step  to   make 

plain. 

vn 

An  object  becomes  beautiful  only  through 
becoming  single,  complete,  isolated.  In  look- 
ing at  a  picture  of  a  landscape,  we  must  often 
have  doubted  whether  a  result  so  slender  is 
deserving  of  so  much  pains.  Instead  of  try- 
ing to  construct  or  adapt  a  scene,  we  wonder 
why  the  painter  did  not  snatch  a  piece  straight 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  109 

from  nature.  Any  window  might  serve  him. 
Let  him  take  the  window  frame  for  his  picture 
frame,  and  put  into  his  picture  whatever  that 
frame  contains.  If  he  simply  copies  what  he 
finds  there,  will  he  not  have  the  best  of  land- 
scapes ?  Nothing  Uke  it.  Of  course,  what  is 
there  could  not  be  fully  copied.  The  resources 
of  paint  and  the  dexterity  of  fingers  are  not 
sufficient.  But  could  it  be  truly  reported, 
point  by  point,  the  result  would  be  monstrous, 
—  a  fragment,  something  torn  out  of  nature, 
with  ragged  edges  and  with  little  relation 
among  its  represented  objects.  It  would  not 
come  together.  What  the  artist  tries  to  do  in 
composing  a  landscape  is  to  put  into  it  what- 
ever will  be  necessary  for  its  best  understand- 
ing. It  should  imply  nothing  beyond  itself, 
and  within  itself  all  portions  should  be  mutu- 
ally helpful.  Undoubtedly  we  sometimes  find 
in  nature  groupings  which  allow  us  to  take 
them  substantially  unaltered,  because  in  them 
there  have  occurred  such  coordination  of  part 
with  part  as  we  are  ordinarily  obliged  to  estab- 
lish for  ourselves.  But  seldom,  indeed,  does 
nature  furnish  all  the  adjustments  required 
for  unity. 

In  the  same  way,  if  I  should  take  any  half 


110  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

hour  out  of  the  life  of  my  friend  and  report 
its  events,  I  should  obtain  an  interesting  series 
of  observations  on  a  fellow  being,  but  these 
would  not  constitute  a  story,  a  work  of  art. 
The  events  of  that  half  hour  are  essentially 
connected  with  what  went  before  and  what  is 
still  to  come.  Anybody  contemplating  this 
fragment  would  find  no  unity.  Whenever  we 
tell  a  story,  the  difficulty  recurs.  We  are  apt 
to  assume  certain  facts  as  familiar  to  the 
reader  which  we  have  no  right  to  assume. 
Not  until  our  story  demands  nothing  for  its 
comprehension  which  is  not  contained  within 
itself,  is  it  excellent;  and  nothing  unde- 
manded  must  appear,  or  the  reader's  interest 
will  be  split  and  disappointed.  A  French 
critic  of  the  drama  forbids  any  character  to 
come  on  the  stage  with  a  gun  unless  somebody 
is  going  to  do  something  with  a  gun  after- 
wards. 

In  short,  in  order  to  be  beautiful  an  object 
must  be  all  contained  within  its  own  compass. 
Accordingly  we  often  find  it  weU  to  emphasize 
the  bounding  lines.  The  painter  feels  his 
picture  hardly  complete  until  it  is  detached 
from  the  surrounding  wall  by  a  frame.  The 
frame  is  a  warning  that  interest  in  the  picture 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  111 

is  a  separate  thing  from  interest  in  the  wall ; 
that  anybody  looking  at  the  picture  should 
think  of  nothing  beyond  it,  its  bounds  being 
supposed  to  hold  a  sufficiency  for  the  under- 
standing. So  desirable  is  detachment.  And 
the  more  sudden  our  sense  of  this  isolation 
of  the  object,  the  keener  is  our  delight  in  its 
beauty.  Whether  the  included  matters  are 
important  or  unimportant,  whether  of  large 
or  small  size,  it  is  of  little  consequence.  But 
completeness  of  inner  relationship  is  of  every 
consequence.  Here  is  a  sketch  of  the  sea; 
on  the  left  a  projecting  rock  ;  on  the  right  a 
tree ;  over  the  water  floats  a  single  cloud,  a 
bird,  a  sail  —  insignificant  matters.  But  the 
colors  are  all  interrelated  and  the  lines  flow 
together,  welding  the  small  facts  into  a  swiftly 
apprehensible  unit.  It  is  a  veritable  picture, 
incomparably  more  beautiful  than  the  most 
accurately  drawn  section  cut  arbitrarily  from 
chaotic  nature  and  left  without  inner  concord. 
The  beautiful  is  that  which  contains  its  own 
explanation. 

When  we  turn  to  a  good  deed  we  find  a 
very  different  state  of  affairs.  I  have  been 
pointing  out  how  essentially  abstract  a  beau- 
tiful object  is,  how  sundered  from  all  else. 


112  THE  FIELD   OF  ETHICS 

To  a  good  deed,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  funda- 
mental that  it  link  itself  with  much  beyond. 
In  its  origin  involving  all  the  character  of 
him  from  whom  it  comes,  it  connects  itself  in 
its  effects  with  the  entire  universe,  and  is  not 
fully  explained  without  knowledge  of  that 
universe.  Its  relations  run  in  every  direction. 
We  can  never  look  to  the  end  of  them.  Per- 
haps an  evil  deed  we  might  call,  like  the  beau- 
tiful object,  abstract ;  or  rather  we  might  say 
that  the  evil-doer  stupidly  tries  to  make  it  so. 
He  attempts  to  limit  its  operation,  to  take  his 
act  detachedly,  as  if  it  stood  aloof,  under  its 
own  law,  exceptional,  and  without  relation  to 
the  rest  of  things.  Of  course  he  does  not  suc- 
ceed. AU  moral  matters,  good  and  bad,  are 
infinite.  But  the  good  deed  is  peculiarly  con- 
crete. It  goes  forth  in  intimate  alliance  with 
the  other  forces  of  its  doer's  life,  with  the  other 
forces  of  society,  with  the  stars  in  their  courses. 
At  its  best  it  announces  what  the  constructive 
powers  of  the  universe  would  bring  about  at 
just  that  juncture.  Here,  accordingly,  is  a 
strongly  marked  contrast  between  the  good 
deed  and  the  beautiful  thing.  The  good 
deed  can  never  be  entire.  That  is  impossible, 
for  it  is  endlessly  relational.     The  beautiful 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  113 

thing  cannot  be  beautiful  unless  complete, 
unless  it  expresses  a  rounded  unity.  It  is 
essentially  single,  particular,  isolated.  But 
this  fundamental  contrast  carries  important 
consequences  in  its  train. 

VIII 

In  a  beautiful  object  the  worth  of  the  parts 
is  judged  by  the  contribution  they  make  to 
the  whole,  and  not  by  their  possible  effect 
elsewhere.  When  we  admire  a  beautiful  thing 
we  do  not  necessarily  admire  the  elements  of 
which  it  is  composed.  Our  admiration  simply 
means  that  those  were  precisely  the  elements 
needed  to  bring  about  compact  wholeness. 
Some  visitor,  seeing  my  little  sketch  of  the 
sea,  might  say,  "  This  is  a  picture  of  a  boat. 
I  was  not  aware  that  you  are  fond  of  boat- 
ing." And  I  should  answer,  "  I  never  enter  a 
boat  unless  I  am  obliged  to,  and  I  get  out  of 
it  as  quickly  as  possible."  "  Then  it  must  be 
you  are  fond  of  rocks.  I  see  a  large  rock  on 
the  left."  "  On  the  contrary,  I  hate  rocks. 
My  farm  is  full  of  them ;  and  I  can  never  see 
one  anywhere  without  thinking  what  an  ob- 
stacle it  is  to  crops."  "  Well,  is  it  clouds 
you  care  for?"     "No,  I  am  a   devotee  of 


114  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

sunshine.  Indeed,  these  several  objects  do 
not  interest  me  —  in  their  severahiess,  I  mean. 
It  is  only  in  their  togetherness,  in  their  rela- 
tion to  one  another,  that  I  take  dehght.  In 
the  beautiful  object  I  study  its  parts  inter  se, 
not  extra  se.'* 

I  might  go  still  farther.  If  the  parts  of 
a  beautiful  object  were  positively  pernicious, 
this  would  not  affect  our  judgment  of  its 
beauty.  If  two  of  us  are  looking  at  a  splen- 
did tree,  and  I,  commending  its  beauty,  declare 
it  to  have  every  virtue  that  a  tree  can  possess, 
—  exuberant  growth,  abundant  top,  strong 
trunk,  sufficient  balance  to  show  no  distor- 
tion, while  yet  not  so  symmetrical  as  to  seem 
mechanical,  —  and  my  friend  declares  he  finds 
no  beauty  in  it,  because  it  has  the  baleful 
power  of  spreading  malaria  far  and  wide  and 
allowing  nobody  to  keep  sound  health  in  its 
neighborhood ;  should  I  not  answer,  "  You 
are  confusing  two  very  different  things.  I 
did  not  call  it  a  useful  tree  nor  hint  that  it 
has  helpful  relations  to  other  beings  than  it- 
self. I  merely  said  it  was  beautiful ;  that  is, 
that  its  internal  relations  were  all  they  should 
be.  Whether  it  produces  good  or  evil  does 
not  affect  its   beauty."     Indeed,  to   suggest 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  116 

that  a  beautiful  thing  has  useful  parts  rather 
detracts  from  our  feeHng  its  beauty.  Sup- 
pose somebody  should  propose  to  make  some- 
thing more  out  of  the  Shaw  Monument  than 
a  mere  work  of  art.  Hinges  might  be  at- 
tached to  the  big  square  of  bronze.  It  might 
be  turned  into  a  gate  and  keep  stragglers 
from  entering  the  Common  at  inappropriate 
hours.  I  believe  we,  should  all  feel  that  this 
usefulness  debased  it.  No  doubt  it  would  re- 
main beautiful  while  swinging  to  and  fro. 
But  would  not  a  kind  of  indignity  be  done 
it  ?  So  great  is  its  worth  in  itself  that  to  at- 
tempt to  add  another  worth  would  behttle. 
The  indignity  would  be  unmistakable  if  in 
order  to  give  external  worth  we  disregard  its 
internal.  It  is  shocking  to  say  that  the  mar- 
ble of  the  Venus  of  Milo  would  make  excel- 
lent lime.  Its  present  uses  are  all  we  wish  to 
think  of. 

Perhaps  these  principles  become  plainer  still 
in  literary  beauty.  Which  character  of  "  Par- 
adise Lost "  attracts  us  most  ?  Not  Adam,  by 
whom  we  are  easily  bored.  Nor  Eve,  who  is 
rather  too  subservient  and  borrows  her  Hght 
too  obviously  from  Adam.  But,  rather,  Satan. 
He  at  least  is  my  favorite.     I  would  alter  no- 


116  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

thing  in  him ;  and  if  I  am  asked  how  I  can 
admire  a  character  so  evO,  I  answer  that  the 
words  "  evil,"  and  "  admiration,"  are  both 
ambiguous.  For  if  it  is  meant  to  inquire 
whether  I  wish  the  crop  of  Satans  to  multi- 
ply in  actual  life,  I  certainly  do  not.  They 
are  altogether  disturbing,  and  should  be  ex- 
tirpated wherever  found.  But  if  admiration 
be  used  aesthetically  and,  not  morally,  then  I 
say  that  nothing  in  the  whole  range  of  Eng- 
hsh  poetry  more  properly  stirs  admiration. 
Here  traits  are  moulded  together  into  strong 
individuality  which  ordinarily  tend  only  to 
weakness.  That  delight  in  evil  which  regu- 
larly breaks  up  the  nature  in  which  it  appears, 
here  becomes  a  directive  power.  What  mar- 
velous skill  is  shown  by  the  artist  who  can 
induce  matters  incompatible,  like  the  envious 
traits  of  Satan,  to  become  compatible,  assistive 
of  one  another  !  Everything  that  Satan  says 
is  just  what  he  ought  to  say  —  not  what 
others  ought  to  say,  but  what  he  ought.  It  is 
just  so  in  the  play  of  "  Othello."  The  heavy, 
ox-like  man,  pushed  on  to  destruction,  slow 
to  move  but  incapable  of  stopping  himself 
when  once  in  motion,  dull  of  apprehension, 
'*  perplexed  in  the  extreme  "  by  what  has  been 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  117 

uncritically  apprehended,  is  certainly  a  huge 
character.  But  more  generally  admired  is  the 
lithe  lago,  exhaustless  of  life,  delighting  in 
intellectual  play  for  its  own  sake,  without  hate, 
without  love,  without  responsibiUty.  lago,  it 
is  true,  being  a  man  of  no  passions,  is  one  of 
the  most  foul-mouthed  of  Shakespeare's  char- 
acters. But  so  he  should  be.  He  is  exquisitely 
consistent.  It  is  not  necessary  to  mark  his 
speeches  with  his  name.  They  are  marked 
with  the  characteristics  of  the  man,  and  all  he 
says  throws  an  ever  fresh  light  on  the  work- 
ings of  his  sinuous  mind.  He  is  a  creature 
of  beauty,  therefore,  —  proved  so  not  by  ser- 
vice to  others  but  by  consistency  with  himself. 
And  can  we  estimate  goodness  in  this  way  ? 
Can  we  test  a  good  deed  by  the  coherence  of 
its  parts  ?  A  good  deed  should  be  coherent, 
should  be  beautiful.  But  we  do  not  rest  con- 
tent with  this.  We  ask  what  will  be  the  effect, 
the  normal  effect,  of  that  deed;  what  is  its 
tendency  ?  A  particular  effect  may  fail  in  a 
given  case,  but  we  ask  whether  in  the  long 
run  it  will  produce  such  or  such  results.  We 
study  our  deed  in  its  entire  setting,  tracing 
how  it  may  promote  other  good  deeds  and 
stimulate  goodness  throughout  the  entire  tract 


118  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

into  which  it  enters.  Thus,  here  again,  the 
points  of  view  from  which  we  survey  beauty 
and  goodness  are  widely  unUke.  The  ele- 
ments which  enter  into  a  good  deed  are 
broadly  effective  and  bring  themselves  into 
adjustment  with  more  than  themselves.  When 
we  call  a  good  thing  beautiful,  we  speak  of 
only  a  single  aspect  of  it  and  have  not  yet 
taken  up  the  distinctively  moral  point  of  view. 

IX 

According  as  an  object  is  beautiful  it  be- 
comes insusceptible  of  growth,  is  finished, 
fixed,  finite,  however  rich  in  suggestions  of 
infinity.  The  hardships  of  fife  are  rooted  in  its 
limitations.  We  engage,  for  example,  in  some 
enjoyable  action.  That  action  is  destined  to 
come  to  an  end;  its  end  is  prefigured  in 
its  beginning.  While  in  its  career,  it  must 
be  conducted  under  the  strictest  rules.  Only 
by  proceeding  exactly  so,  precisely  thus,  can 
the  intended  result  be  reached.  We  are  finite 
beings.  Our  knowledge,  our  desires,  our  ac- 
tivities are  hemmed  in  on  every  side,  while 
our  wishes  run  far  beyond  restriction  and 
seek  to  loose  themselves  from  every  bond. 
Now  I  take  it  that  at  the  times  when  we  most 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  119 

keenly  feel  the  bitterness  of  such  limitations, 
we  feel  also  most  fully  the  solace  of  the  fine 
arts.  In  them  we  take  refuge  as  in  a  realm 
of  infinitude.  Here  we  rid  ourselves  of  that 
sense  of  restriction  which  besets  our  ordinary 
concerns. 

Curiously  enough,  the  fact  is  the  very  op- 
posite of  that  which  our  feelings  report.  The 
beautiful  object,  more  than  anything  else  in 
life,  is  limited,  finite.  The  considerations  we 
have  brought  forward  have  made  this  abun- 
dantly clear.  In  the  presence  of  a  beautiful 
object  we  say,  "  It  is  enough,  I  wish  nothing 
more.  Here  is  all  that  any  one  could  ask." 
But  is  not  this  the  same  as  to  say  that  we  are 
here  dealing  with  an  entirely  finite  afPair? 
It  is  through  smallness,  limitation,  detach- 
ment, that  the  thing  of  beauty  gets  its  per- 
fection. That  is  why  we  personal  beings  are 
never  altogether  beautiful.  We  never  can  be 
complete,  such  ties  with  the  infinite  are  in 
us.  If,  to  be  so,  we  allow  ourselves  to  pause 
at  some  assumed  perfection,  we  destroy  our 
goodness  and  render  ourselves  incomplete 
anew.  It  is  impossible,  then,  that  a  person 
shall  ever  be  really  beautiful,  for  he  is  always 
in  the  making.     Growth  is  involved  in  his 


120  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

structure.  It  is  excluded  from  the  beautiful 
object.  In  making  that  object  complete,  we 
have  cut  off  the  possibility  of  further  develop- 
ment. No  doubt  we  often  speak  of  a  grow- 
ing object  as  beautiful,  but  only  in  an  accom- 
modated sense.  Arresting  growth  at  some 
single  point,  contemplating  what  has  already 
been  attained,  and  for  the  moment  with- 
drawing attention  from  the  developmental 
agencies  still  at  work,  we  admire  its  beauty. 
More  strikingly  still,  we  sometimes  speak  of 
an  entire  line  of  development  as  beautiful. 
But  in  this  case  we  contemplate  the  line  not 
merely  in  what  has  actually  been  accomplished 
but  in  that  toward  which  its  tendencies  move. 
In  calling  a  growing  object  beautiful,  we  fore- 
cast what  is  not  really  present  in  that  which 
we  behold.  Strictly  speaking,  in  the  beau- 
tiful thing  the  work  of  evolution  is  ended. 
As  much  has  been  done  as  will  ever  be  done. 
Accordingly  there  is  always  something  petty 
about  a  beautiful  object,  even  the  most  beau- 
tiful. It  has  stopped  and,  unlike  the  moral 
being,  rests  in  its  finitude. 

I  have  said,  however,  that  the  beautiful 
object  through  its  very  finitude  suggests  in- 
finity.    Strange  that  it  should  do  so  !     Per- 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  121 

haps  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  goal  of  our 
endeavors  being  attained  so  dimly  and  imper- 
fectly elsewhere,  beauty,  with  its  goal  already 
reached,  comes  to  us  as  a  prophecy  of  what 
might  be,  so  that  only  in  connection  with  the 
beautiful  does  the  infinite  seem  possible  and 
clear.  I  cannot  fully  explain  the  matter.  We 
certainly  should  not  expect  to  meet  the  infinite 
most  strikingly  in  that  portion  of  life  from 
which  it  is  most  nearly  banished.  But  this 
I  believe  to  be  the  fact.  As  I  understand 
it,  in  order  to  be  beautiful  an  object  must 
have  accepted  limits,  have  reached  its  growth, 
have  completed  its  development;  yet  in  its 
presence  alone  do  thoughts  of  limitation  pass 
away,  and  we  enter  a  region  where  restriction 
ceases  and  we  seem  to  have  attained  that 
very  infinitude  for  which  elsewhere  we  vainly 

yearn. 

X 

Such  appear  to  be  the  three  lines  of  dis- 
tinction between  ethics  and  aesthetics.  Per- 
haps I  should  rather  say  the  single  distinc- 
tion, one  fundamental  contrast  being  here 
presented  in  a  threefold  aspect.  Nor  does 
this  contrast  altogether  prevent  an  object 
from  being  both  good  and  beautiful.     While 


122  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

it  moves  toward  completion  and  enters  con- 
tinually into  wider  relationship,  we  think  of 
it  as  good.  In  its  attainment  and  satisfied 
repose  we  feel  it  beautiful.  These  are  differ- 
ent points  of  view.  Yet  to  have  belittled  sa- 
cred beauty,  even  to  this  extent,  seems  an  act 
of  profanity.  Before  closing  I  will  make  a 
kind  of  atonement  by  turning  back  and  point- 
ing out  the  enormous  debts  which  ethics  owes 
to  aesthetics,  the  large  dependence  which  the 
good  must  always  have  upon  the  beautiful. 

XI 

In  the  first  place,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
from  aesthetics  goodness  borrows  its  concep- 
tion of  organic  wholeness ;  and  no  other  con- 
ception is  of  equal  importance  for  moral 
guidance.  The  time  when  a  man  first  comes 
upon  it  constitutes  an  epoch  in  his  hfe.  It 
is  the  foundation  of  science.  As  children 
we  look  out  on  the  world  seeing  one  thing 
and  another  thing  and  another  thing.  Each 
object  is  an  independent  affair.  Gradually 
we  begin  to  perceive  that  the  various  objects 
which  we  see  belong  together,  that  the  one  is 
in  some  sense  dependent  on  the  other.  But 
it  is  a  long  time  before  we  come  to  the  great 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  123 

discovery  that  every  object  in  the  world  is 
dependent  on  every  other.  The  moment  we 
have  mastered  this  thought  and  know  that 
we  cannot  understand  one  thing  until  we 
have  understood  aU,  incipiently  at  least  we 
are  scientific  men. 

Nor  can  we  be  moral  men  until  this 
thought  is  ours.  The  child  is  impelled  in 
one  direction  by  one  powerful  impulse  and 
in  another  by  another.  He  strongly  desires 
this  now  and  something  else  by  and  by.  A 
multitude  of  whirling  desires  sweep  him 
away.  We  might  say  that  the  forces  at  work 
upon  him  are  centrifugal,  tearing  to  pieces 
the  central  self.  Each  moves  on  its  own  pe- 
culiar track,  while  he,  the  person,  is  as  yet 
unformed.  Some  time  or  other  the  great 
thought  comes  to  him  that  these  varied  pas- 
sions cannot  be  valued  independently.  He 
cannot  call  one  of  them  good  or  bad.  He 
must  ask,  "  How  far  does  each  impulse  of  my 
nature  help  me  to  fashion  a  whole  —  my- 
self ?"  Through  an  understanding  of  that 
self,  thus  constituted,  their  worth  becomes 
tested.  When  that  young  mind  has  grasped 
this  conception  of  an  organism,  he  is  a  new 
being.     The  whole  moral  world  Hes  open  to 


124  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

him.  Soon  he  will  be  led  on  to  contemplate 
a  larger  self  still,  that  selfhood  in  which  he 
individually  becomes  adjusted  to  all  other 
individuals  in  helpful  unity.  And  this  con- 
ception of  organic  wholeness  is  precisely  that 
which  is  summed  up  in  rounded  perfection  and 
instantaneously  presented  to  our  feeHngs  in 
each  beautiful  object  we  behold.  It  is  beauty 
which  is  the  chief  teacher  of  the  importance 
of  organization.  "  Study  the  whole,"  it  is 
perpetually  saying.  "  Do  not  let  life  become 
disintegrated.  See  things  in  their  relations 
to  one  another,  and  observe  what  peace  at- 
tends the  wholeness." 

XII 

Then  a  practical  gain  comes  to  the  moral 
life  from  aesthetics,  for  again  and  again  we 
need  beauty  to  reconcile  us  to  law.  Who  is 
there  who  does  not  sometimes  fret  under 
obHgation  ?  A  duty  calls,  we  accomplish  it, 
and  think  we  are  about  to  be  free.  But  right 
before  us  stands  another  duty,  obliging  us, 
instead  of  following  our  own  sweet  will,  to 
attend  to  it.  Following  that  out,  we  still 
have  not  obtained  our  discharge.  Duty  after 
duty  lies  in  wait  wherever  we   turn.     Life 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  125 

seems  reduced  to  slavery.  The  crack  of  the 
moral  whip  never  ceases.  When  we  would 
rest  and  amuse  ourselves,  and  really  obtain 
some  pleasure  from  life,  we  are  compelled  to 
hear  the  intrusive  voice  of  duty,  bidding  us 
do  what  it  commands  and  not  what  we  would 
hke.  Willing  as  we  may  be  to  give  up  por- 
tions of  life  to  duty,  clearly  as  we  may  per- 
ceive that  Hves  not  so  given  are  poor,  we  do 
not  want  to  feel  our  necks  under  the  yoke 
forever.  We  want  a  little  pleasure  before 
life  is  ended  and  not  to  have  spent  all  in 
responding  to  harsh  exaction. 

Now  I  know  nothing  that  can  reconcile  us 
to  the  hf e  of  duty  except  the  revelation  which 
beauty  brings.  For  I  suppose  we  all  feel  the 
field  of  beauty  to  be  the  field  of  delight.  In 
beauty's  presence  we  find  our  keenest  enjoy- 
ments, and  we  instinctively  oppose  these  al- 
lurements of  beautiful  things  to  the  behests 
of  duty.  But  is  this  instinctive  opposition 
correct?  Exploring  beauty,  we  find  that  in 
it  law  reigns  more  entirely  than  anywhere 
else.  We  have  already  seen  how  art  ban- 
ishes caprice,  how  only  that  which  is  de- 
manded by  the  law  of  the  whole  can  enter  a 
beautiful  object.     Yet  the  result  is  delight. 


126  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

We  have  figured  to  ourselves  when  going 
through  the  long  train  of  duty  that  pleasure 
lay  outside  law ;  and  that  if  we  could  be  rid 
of  its  commands,  pleasure  would  be  ours. 
Beauty  teaches  that  the  opposite  is  true.  In 
beauty  we  are  under  the  government  of  law 
to  a  higher  degree  than  we  possibly  can  be 
elsewhere.  And  still  it  is  here  that  we  feel 
our  keenest  pleasures. 

Accordingly  every  beautiful  object  fur- 
nishes a  luminous  revelation  in  regard  to  the 
character  of  the  moral  Ufe.  Law  and  delight 
are  not  enemies,  but  very  closely  akin.  When 
we  have  supposed  that  by  following  law  we 
were  bringing  ourselves  into  bondage  and 
keeping  pleasure  at  a  distance,  we  were  de- 
ceived. More  frequently  pleasure  has  been 
missed  through  not  allowing  law  sufficient  en- 
trance. I  do  not  know  how  this  lesson  can 
be  taught  elsewhere  with  the  same  impressive- 
Bess.  State  it,  and  there  will  always  be  un- 
belief. But  when  beauty  announces  it,  we 
know  it  is  true.  And  how  widely  it  applies  ! 
What  a  burden,  for  example,  it  is  to  be  al- 
ways thinking  about  order.  When  I  come 
into  my  room,  instead  of  throwing  down  my 
hat  in  one  place  and  my  coat  in  another  and 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  127 

kicking  off  my  boots  wherever  they  may  fall,  I 
cannot  really  be  at  peace  with  duty  until  I  take 
up  each  article  and  put  it  in  a  designated  spot. 
If  I  could  get  rid  of  this  passion  for  order,  as 
many  around  me  do,  then  I  might  lead  a  life  of 
independence  and  be  free  from  pursuing  care. 
So  it  looks.  But  once  initiated  into  beauty, 
we  do  not  think  so.  Then  we  wish  each  func- 
tion of  life  to  be  clear  and  distinct.  When 
we  are  occupied  with  our  sitting  life  we  do 
not  wish  it  intruded  upon  by  our  walking  life. 
If  our  comfortable  chair  is  really  to  be  en- 
joyed, we  like  to  have  it  separated  from  boots 
and  coat.  The  writing  table,  littered  with 
matters  which  do  not  concern  writing,  will  not 
appear  pleasing.  The  discord  there  will  be  as 
offensive  as  a  jarring  note  in  music.  Let  the 
aesthetic  sense  of  order  be  trained  as  the  aes- 
thetic sense  of  hearing  usually  is,  and  order 
will  be  perceived  to  be  an  expression  of  the 
beauty  of  vigorous  and  discriminated  Hving. 
Where  order  is  not  present,  functions  are  hin- 
dered and  pleasures  in  the  long  run  diminished. 
He  is  wise  who  has  learned  to  take  moral  mat- 
ters aesthetically,  and  through  the  truer  in- 
sight which  the  sense  of  beauty  gives  has 
come  to  smile  at  the  stern  exactions  of  duty. 


128  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

XIII 

One  further  debt  shoiJd  be  recorded  as 
owed  by  ethics  to  aesthetics,  and  that  is,  that 
the  aim  sought  in  ethics  is  set  by  aesthetics. 
When  we  seek  after  goodness  and  try  in  any 
given  way  to  morahze  our  lives,  we  can  do  so 
only  by  having  in  mind  a  goal  to  be  ultimately 
reached.  If,  for  example,  we  set  out  to  study, 
we  must  have  in  mind  the  goal  of  a  finished 
totality  of  wisdom ;  we  must  seek  to  become 
entirely  learned  persons.  Do  we  expect,  then, 
to  become  entirely  learned  persons  ?  By  no 
means.  Every  degree  of  wisdom  that  we  at- 
tain simply  opens  a  fresh  possibility  of  further 
learning.  We  shall  not  reach  it,  but  we  could 
not  study  without  figuring  to  ourselves  the 
goal  of  wisdom.  Now  completed  wisdom  is 
an  aesthetic  aim  alluring  us  by  its  beauty.  I 
seek  to  be  a  good  man  ;  that  is,  to  have  a  per- 
fect character.  Such  an  ideal  of  a  perfect 
character  is  a  thought  of  myself  as  beautiful, 
rounded,  ended.  In  reahty  I  know  there  is 
no  such  thing  possible  as  a  rounded  and  ended 
character.  But  I  have  it  in  mind  as  an  object 
of  endeavor.  And  this  object,  so  necessary 
to  the  moral  life,  is  an  affair  of  beauty. 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  129 

There  are  two  opposite  errors  into  which  one 
may  fall  at  this  point.  We  have  already  seen 
that  devotees  of  beauty  are  not  the  most  stren- 
uous moralists.  The  causes  of  this  are  often 
alleged  to  be  the  great  vivacity  of  the  artist's 
physical  senses  and  the  fact  that  he  inhabits 
a  somewhat  unreal  world.  I  do  not  doubt 
there  are  perils  in  both  of  these  directions. 
But  another  reason  now  appears.  The  adorer 
of  beauty  is  a  lover  of  a  finished  result.  But 
finished  results  are  not  to  be  had  in  the  moral 
life.  This  always  remains  unfinished.  If 
completeness  is  prized,  it  must  be  sought  in 
what  is  small,  superficial,  and  easily  detached, 
rather  than  in  matters  fundamental.  And 
here  is  a  danger  of  the  artistic  temperament. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  persons  in  whom 
the  aesthetic  sense  is  feeble.  They  are  well 
aware  that  duty  is  never  finished,  character 
never  complete,  service  to  the  community 
never  at  an  end.  Such  persons  go  through 
life  as  slaves;  forever  under  ahen  compulsion. 
Beauty  should  rest  them.  He  who  has  a  ready 
apprehension  of  it  will  detect  its  little  whole- 
nesses everywhere,  and  in  each  one  of  them 
will  catch  a  refreshing  prophecy  of  that  which 
he  continually  seeks.     Nothing  relieves  the 


130  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

hardness   of  life   like  the   facile   seizure   of 

beauty. 

XIV 

We  may  now  sum  up  what  has  been  said 
in  regard  to  beauty  and  compare  it  with  the 
results  of  our  examination  of  the  law.  The 
law  conceived  a  person  in  too  objective  a  way, 
studying  him  only  in  relation  to  his  fellows, 
and  chiefly  with  the  purpose  of  preventing 
his  injuring  them.  His  worth  was  estimated, 
not  in  terms  of  himself,  but  in  terms  of  his 
neighbor.  Necessary  for  certain  purposes  of 
life  as  was  this  mode  of  treating  persons,  we 
found  it  inadequate  as  an  account  of  the 
moral  man.  Too  objective  I  called  it;  and 
we  turned  to  the  subjective  fine  arts,  hoping 
to  find  in  them  the  ethical  point  of  view  more 
nearly  attained.  But  our  trouble  with  the  fine 
arts  is  just  the  reverse  of  that  with  the  law. 
Artistically  we  estimate  a  person  purely  in 
terms  of  himself,  disregarding  all  that  lies 
beyond.  The  point  of  view  of  aesthetics  is 
therefore  far  too  subjective  to  yield  a  full  sur- 
vey of  the  moral  field.  For  though  a  moral 
being  must  be  a  person,  who,  like  an  object 
of  fine  art,  has  worth  in  himself,  he  must  also 
fulfill  relations  to  his  fellow  men,  as  the  law 
requires. 


ETHICS  AND  ESTHETICS  131 

What  we  need,  then,  is  some  province  dif- 
ferent from  either  the  law  or  aesthetics,  —  dif- 
ferent, though  including  the  point  of  view  of 
each.  Morahty  judges  persons  as  both  subjec- 
tive and  objective,  as  both  beautiful  and  legal. 
Is  there,  then,  any  aspect  of  life  in  which  a 
man's  worth  is  reckoned  in  terms  of  himself 
at  the  same  moment  when  that  worth  is  esti- 
mated in  terms  of  his  fellow  men  ?  Perhaps 
we  should  add  one  further  demand.  We 
saw  that  beauty  was  always  finite,  while  good- 
ness could  not  be  stated  in  finite  terms.  Our 
new  province  must  present  us  a  being,  not 
merely  of  worth  in  himself  and  of  worth  in 
reference  to  others,  but  of  a  worth  unlimited, 
admitting  of  endless  growth,  and  opening  out 
upon  infinity. 

When  these  conditions  are  distinctly  un- 
derstood, it  is  evident  that  they  are  fulfilled 
in  only  one  field,  in  that  of  religion. 


REFERENCES   ON   THE   RELATIONS   OF   ART 
AND    ETHICS 

Shaftesbury's  Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue. 

Schiller's  Letters  on  the  Esthetic  Education  of  the  Human 

Race. 
Sharp's  iGsthetic  Element  in  Morality. 
Merriman's  Religio  Pictoris. 
Palmer's  Glory  of  the  Imperfect. 
Santayana's  Sense  of  Beauty,  pt.  i. 
Miinsterberg's  Psychology  and  Life,  ch.  iv. 
Dickinson's  Greek  View  of  Life,  ch.  iv. 
Mackenzie's  Ethics,  ch.  xvi. 
Plato's  Republic,  bk.  iii. 
Aristotle's  Poetics,  ch.  vii. 
Marshall's  Pleasure,  Pain^  and  iGsthetics. 


IV 
ETHICS  AND  RELIGION 

AFFINITIES 


IV 


ETHICS   AND   RELIGION 

ATiTlNlTLKS 
I 

The  Christian  believer,  or  rather  the  reli- 
gious man  of  every  faith,  thinks  of  himself  as 
a  being  whose  conduct  and  character  possess 
worth,  worth  respected  of  God  and  furthering 
or  hindering  the  worth  of  his  feUow  men.  He 
is  a  person,  in  short,  of  both  subjective  and 
objective  importance.  He  knows,  too,  that 
he  is  essentially  connected  with  the  infinite 
ground  of  all  worth,  which  is  indeed  his  own 
source  of  supply.  This  inherent  connection 
forbids  any  estimate  of  himself  in  finite  terms. 
The  field  of  rehgion,  accordingly,  approaches 
that  of  ethics  more  nearly  than  can  possibly 
the  field  of  the  law  or  aesthetics.  It  has  not 
the  onesidedness  of  either  of  these.  What 
is  the  degree  of  this  nearness,  and  does  it 
amount  to  identity? 

For  an  answer,  I  shall  not  enter  into  the 
vexed  and   interesting   question   of  origins. 


136  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

That  belongs  to  a  different  order  of  inquiry. 
In  what  way  morality  and  religion  first  mani- 
fested themselves,  certainly  forms  an  instruc- 
tive chapter  of  history,  —  a  descriptive  science, 
—  but  has  only  an  indirect  bearing  on  norma- 
tive investigations.  Questions  of  origin  and 
questions  of  validity  spring  from  different 
quarters  of  the  human  mind.  They  cannot  be 
given  a  single  answer  without  misleading  him 
who  asks,  and  distorting  two  important  lines  of 
inquiry.  To  find  out  the  power  and  signifi- 
cance of  any  factor  of  personal  life,  we  do  not 
wisely  study  it  where  it  is  feeblest,  in  its  be- 
ginnings. Its  value  is  best  tested  when  most 
operative,  in  its  developed  form.  That  in 
early  times  religion  was  something  pretty  gro- 
tesque is  well  known.  That  it  has  undergone 
development  is  generally  agreed,  and  that  in 
doing  so  it  has  passed  through  a  tolerably  fixed 
order  of  stages,  from  repulsive  early  externali- 
ties to  the  spiritual  ennoblements  of  to-day, 
seems  highly  probable.  But  this  is  no  more 
true  of  religion  than  of  any  other  of  man's 
affairs.  Medicine,  architecture,  trade,  love, 
have  similarly  all  experienced  immense  trans- 
formations, and  appear  among  us  in  forms 
very  unlike   those  which  characterized  their 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  137 

primitive  start.  When  we  try  to  fix  the  place 
in  man's  life  of  any  of  these,  we  do  not  get 
much  help  from  inspection  of  half-understood 
beginnings.  An  historical  account  of  the  tem- 
poral sequence  of  social  forms  furnishes  an 
impressive  lesson  as  regards  the  slowness  of 
man  in  comprehending  his  needs  and  powers. 
It  is  also  full  of  encouragement  for  his  ulti- 
mate growth.  But  if  we  would  know  the 
meaning  and  capacity  of  architecture,  it  would 
be  folly  to  seek  it  in  the  initial  stages  of  the 
art.  The  savage's  hut  cannot  possibly  ex- 
plain Amiens  Cathedral,  though  the  cathe- 
dral throws  much  light  on  the  hut.  The  last 
stages,  not  the  first,  disclose  the  significance 
of  a  developmental  process. 

We  may,  it  is  true,  set  aside  all  questions 
of  significance.  We  may  chronicle  a  series 
of  social  changes  with  as  much  disinterested- 
ness as  we  do  a  series  of  physical  ones,  never 
asking  whether  as  they  occurred  men  found 
broader  room  for  ampler  powers.  And  there 
is  much  value  in  such  an  account  from  which 
all  thoughts  of  advance  are  excluded.  But 
whenever  we  talk  of  development,  we  are 
thinking  of  conditions  which  involve  a  lower 
and  a  higher,  of  a  movement  toward  a  mark. 


138  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

of  a  conclusion  more  expressive  of  man's  in- 
terests than  was  its  beginning. 

Now  I  think  it  is  sure  that  both  religion 
and  morality  have  developed ;  that  is,  that  in 
their  present  forms  they  are  better  adjusted 
to  human  nature  than  ever  they  were  before. 
When  then  I  try  to  make  out  their  relations 
to  each  other,  I  do  not  turn  back  to  the 
pathetic  gropings  and  misapprehensions  of 
primeval  man.  Nor  shall  I  trace  minutely 
the  degree  or  frequency  with  which  religion 
has  found  itself  associated  with  morality. 
This  has  often  been  brought  about  or  pre- 
vented by  external  conditions.  Religion  has 
at  times  been  overpoweringly  ceremonial,  and 
has  then  seemed  meagre  enough  in  morality. 
Morality,  too,  when  most  ardent,  has  again 
and  again  attacked  religion  and  has  often 
attempted  to  crush  the  infamous  thing.  But 
was  it  not  on  these  glorious  occasions  reestab- 
lishing religion  on  more  solid  foundations? 
Substantially,  though  with  an  occasional 
clash,  the  two  are  acknowledged  to  have  de- 
veloped pari  2^ctssu.  What  we  want  to  know 
is,  why  their  connection  has  been  so  close  ? 
Now  that  both  are  at  their  completest  point, 
can  we  say  that  religion  embraces  within  itself 


ETHICS  AND'  RELIGION  139 

the  whole  moral  life,  or  are  some  elements  of 
that  life  still  relatively  independent  ?  When 
most  fully  engrossed  in  thoughts  of  God,  are 
we  most  completely  removed  from  moral  dan- 
ger? Or,  to  put  our  question  in  its  most 
arguable  form,  does  the  love  of  God  naturally 
include  the  love  of  our  neighbor  ?  Is  duty 
apprehensible  only  through  recognition  of  our 
relation  to  an  infinite  being  ? 

II 
This  question  would  commonly  enough  be 
answered  affirmatively.  There  is  a  general 
belief  that  the  religious  man  is,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  moral,  and  the  moral  man  fundamen- 
tally religious.  The  moral  man  need  not, 
indeed,  be  religious  according  to  a  specified 
type.  We  ought  not  to  identify  religion  with 
this  or  that  particular  religion.  But  rehgion 
in  general,  rehgion  manifested  in  its  highest 
forms,  is  commonly  supposed  to  be  undivorci- 
ble  from  morality.  No  doubt  it  is  easy  so  to 
misconceive  both  rehgion  and  morality  that 
they  may  be  set  far  asunder.  But  will  this 
separation  endure  careful  scrutiny  ?  Ordinary 
life  contains  a  multitude  of  moral  maxims.  It 
is  said  a  person  cannot  be  a  good  man  unless 


140  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

he  does  so  and  so.  But  on  consideration  no 
one  would  hold  that  exact  conformity  to  spe- 
cific precepts  is  religiously  commanded.  The 
question  is  whether  one  who  pierced  through 
conventional  maxims  to  discover  duties  under- 
neath, —  one  who  ever  sought  to  grasp  the 
principles  on  which  specific  precepts  rest,  — 
whether  such  a  man  would  find  his  obedience 
to  the  laws  of  morals  obedience  also  to  the 
law  of  God.  There  is  a  large  consensus  of 
opinion  af&rming  that  he  would.  I  will  classify 
the  testimony. 

Early  times  know  no  duties  which  are  not 
rehgious.  The  patterns  of  bows,  rugs,  and 
domestic  implements,  the  times  and  methods 
of  planting,  food,  hygienic  arrangements, 
medicine,  dress,  social  courtesies,  birth,  mar- 
riage, burial,  —  not  one  of  them  is  adjusted 
without  reference  to  religious  prescription. 
Religion  permeates  the  whole  of  life,  knowing 
little  distinction  of  sacred  and  secular.  To 
become  acquainted  with  the  gods  of  a  people 
is  to  learn  the  national  conduct  and  character ; 
and,  conversely,  to  observe  the  people's  be- 
havior is  to  read  a  chapter  in  the  biography 
of  their  gods.  Whatever  traces  later  ages 
may  show  of  a  separation  of  morality  from 


ETHICS  AND  BELIGION  141 

religion,  the  separation  is  one  of  which  early 
times  know  absolutely  nothing. 

And  to  a  large  extent  later  ages  are  of  the 
same  mind.  The  priesthood,  the  ministry, 
have  always  been  the  recognized  guardians 
of  the  modes  of  living  approved  in  their 
communities.  And  while  there  has  certainly 
been  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  religious 
functionaries  to  dull  the  moral  interests  com- 
mitted to  their  charge,  and  to  check  their 
priority,  freshness,  and  growth,  it  may  truly 
be  said,  on  the  other  hand,  that  moral  leaders 
have  almost  invariably  been  religious  leaders, 
insistent  on  the  unity  of  divine  and  human 
law.  Preeminently  is  this  true  of  Jesus.  We 
cannot  call  him  an  awakening  moral  teacher, 
nor  the  revealer  of  a  new  faith,  without  mis- 
interpreting his  work.  He  was  both,  and  each 
by  means  of  the  other.  He  sought  to  bring 
men  to  a  knowledge  of  themselves  through 
God,  and  to  God  through  a  knowledge  of 
human  relationships.  In  him  the  love  of  God 
and  man  were  not  two  things,  but  one.  And 
all  his  attacks  on  the  constituted  authorities 
of  his  day  were  directed  against  their  attempt 
to  take  the  humanity  out  of  divine  things. 


142  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 


in 


In  every  age  since  that  of  Jesus,  certain 
experts  have  advocated  his  view  ;  I  mean  by 
experts  persons  devoting  themselves  specifi- 
cally to  investigations  of  ethics  and  religion. 
These  men,  though  persons  widely  unlike  in 
temperament  and  training,  have  agreed  in  the 
substantial  identity  of  the  two  departments. 
For  early  Christianity,  Augustine  laid  down 
the  moral  rule,  "  Love  God,  and  do  as  you 
please."  "  DiHge,  et  quod  vis  fac."  Nothing 
else  is  needed.  The  inchnations  wiU  be  so 
transformed  by  love  of  God  that  they  wiU  al- 
ways point  to  righteousness.  The  Ten  Com- 
mandments are  no  doubt  a  convenience  for 
persons  incapable  of  perceiving  the  unity  of 
virtue.  The  precepts  which  society  has  grad- 
ually elaborated  and  embodied  in  its  forms 
and  usages  may  well  repay  study.  But  all 
rest  on  an  elementary  principle.  If  we  love 
God,  morality  is  ours. 

A  precisely  similar  criticism  on  the  Ten 
Commandments  Jesus  himself  had  offered. 
He  pointed  out  that  there  are  not  ten  duties, 
but  one.  Love  God,  including  your  neighbor, 
he  said  —  and  seemed  to  think  the  two  much 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  143 

the  same  thing.  "  For  all  the  law  is  fulfilled 
in  this  one  word :  thou  shalt  love  God  with 
all  the  soul  and  with  all  the  heart."  That  is 
the  one  and  only  commandment.  Allegiance 
to  God  and  allegiance  to  righteousness  are 
identified.  Augustine's  suhHme  statement 
merely  repeats  the  thought. 

It  may,  however,  be  felt  that  these  judg- 
ments are  biased.  Jesus  was  founding  a 
church,  of  which  Augustine  was  a  defender. 
The  two  naturally  give  truth  a  religious  color. 
But  let  us  take  the  testimony  of  one  who  stood 
outside  all  religious  communions,  one  who 
was  a  singularly  original  and  unpurchasable 
explorer  in  ethical  fields.  No  one  will  charge 
Spinoza  with  ecclesiastical  prejudice.  Yet  the 
conclusion  of  his  great  treatise  is  that  in 
the  love  of  God  all  duties  are  fulfilled ;  apart 
from  that  love  duty  has  no  existence.  He 
who  has  not  attained  the  love  of  God  is  in- 
capable of  goodness.  He  may  be  unaware  of 
possessing  that  love  and  still  in  reaHty  do  so. 
That  is  conceivable.  But  whatever  goodness 
he  has  must,  in  Spinoza's  judgment,  spring 
from  his  love  of  God.  There  is  no  other 
possible  source.  The  outcast  Jew,  Spinoza, 
and  the  Church  Father,  Augustine,  accord 


144  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

in  maintaining  the  unity  of  ethics  and  reK- 
gion. 

But  these  are  ancient  authorities.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  no  mor- 
ahst  had  a  wider  currency  among  EngUsh 
speakers  than  Paley.  With  him,  the  rehgious 
sanction  is  the  only  sanction.  If  the  belief 
in  God  should  perish,  he  declares  that  all  mo- 
rality would  perish  with  it.  It  is  easy  to  dis- 
parage Paley.  People  nowadays  say  that  he 
had  no  large  acquaintance  with  either  God  or 
morals.  But  only  a  Httle  earlier,  one  of  the 
greatest  ethical  forces  America  ever  produced, 
Jonathan  Edwards,  said  the  same  thing.  His 
doctrine  is  a  repetition  of  that  of  Spinoza  and 
Augustine.  He  holds  that  the  love  of  God 
is  the  whole  duty  of  man,  and  that  conduct 
lacking  that  excellence  lacks  all.  Paley  and 
Jonathan  Edwards  are  about  as  unlike  as 
Augustine  and  Spinoza.  But  in  this  belief 
they  are  agreed. 

With  them  agree  some  of  the  leading  ex- 
perts of  to-day.  Henry  Sidgwick  has  had 
immense  influence  in  English  ethics,  largely 
because  he  is  so  persistently  unable  to  make 
up  his  mind.  He  considers  every  side  of  every 
subject,  and  rejects  httle  except  dogmatic  con- 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  145 

elusions.  Yet  the  last  pages  of  the  "  Methods 
of  Ethics  "  declare  ethics  to  be  an  imperfect 
science,  incapable  of  completion  without  reli- 
gion. Parted  from  that,  ethics  has  little  mean- 
ing. The  ultimate  sanction  of  every  right 
deed  must,  when  considered  carefully,  be  the 
religious  sanction.  This  is  Paley's  doctrine, 
and  a  remarkable  one  to  appear  in  a  mind  so 
secular  as  Sidgwick's.  But  it  appears  again 
in  another  writer  about  as  untrammeled  as  he. 
Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  the  historian  of 
the  criminal  law  of  England.  His  book,  "  Lib- 
erty, Equality,  and  Fraternity,"  attempts  to 
prove  that  if  the  religious  beliefs  of  mankind 
perish,  morality  will  go  too.  Stephen  is  no 
theologian,  and  does  not  attempt  to  inquire 
which  faiths  are  true  or  false.  But  religious 
conviction  and  right  conduct  are,  in  his  view, 
so  identified  that  the  one  must  ever  be  modi- 
fied by  the  other. 

Here  is  a  sufficiently  varied  collection  of 
authorities.  I  have  cited  Christian  teachers 
simply  because  Christianity  is  the.  religion 
under  which  we  hve.  Under  other  religions, 
the  identification  of  the  two  fields  would  have 
been  commoner  still. 


146  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

TV 

But  the  beliefs  of  experts  do  not,  I  think, 
announce  so  fully  what  is  in  the  mind  of  a 
race  as  do  its  institutions.  A  second  class  of 
testimony  shall  accordingly  show  how  large 
is  the  stake  set  by  civic  institutions  on  the 
close  relationship  of  religion  and  morals.  The 
amount  of  money  spent  by  most  modern  na- 
tions on  church  establishments  is  one  of  the 
largest  charges  incurred  for  any  single  ob- 
ject. Mihtary  expenditure,  that  on  means  of 
communication,  —  railroads,  telegraphs,  post 
offices,  and  that  on  education,  —  may  occa- 
sionally rival  it.  It  is,  in  any  case,  an  enor- 
mous sum,  —  in  this  country,  about  two 
hundred  miUion  dollars  of  annual  outlay. 
Here,  it  is  true,  it  is  spent  by  groups  of 
individuals,  and  not  by  the  state.  Yet  these 
voluntary  churches  are  counted  by  the  state 
of  such  importance  to  the  morals  of  the  com- 
munity that  all  taxes  on  them  are  remitted. 
The  remission  constitutes  a  large  subsidy,  the 
more  remarkable  because  under  this  mode  of 
giving  the  state  does  not  direct  expenditure. 
State  aid  is  thus  granted  to  churches  of  every 
sect,  and  simply  because  they  are  churches. 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  147 

Here  is  strong  testimony  to  the  general  con- 
viction of  a  close  connection  between  morality 
and  religion.  It  means  that  if  rehgion  flour- 
ishes in  a  community,  expensive  vice  is  dimin- 
ished, upright  and  social  conduct  increased. 
And  probably  most  of  us  are  instinctively 
of  this  mind  whether  we  profess  ourselves 
believers  in  God  or  not.  Traveling  in  the 
remote  West  and  desirous  of  settling  in  some 
eligible  spot,  if  we  came  where  pioneers  were 
already  attractively  established,  but  found  that 
in  the  little  settlement  there  was  no  sign  of 
worship,  we  should  probably  move  on.  We 
should  say,  "  Though  not  myself  a  religious 
man,  I  am  safest  under  the  church  spire. 
Property  is  more  secure  where  that  rises. 
Then  there  is  my  family ;  when  my  children 
are  grown,  it  will  be  time  to  warn  them  against 
superstition.  But  I  could  hardly  train  them 
properly  without  religious  institutions."  Such 
feelings  are  common  enough  among  the  irre- 
ligious. Devout  minds  carry  them  a  step  far- 
ther and  find  that  rehgion  is  only  the  com- 
pleted expression  of  morality.  The  prophet 
asks,  "  What  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee 
but  to  do  justly  and  to  love  mercy  and  to 
walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ?  "   And  the  apos- 


148  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

tie  declares  that  "  Pure  religion  and  undefiled 
before  God  and  the  Father  is  this,  To  visit 
the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their  affliction 
and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the  world." 


In  this  lecture  I  have  adopted  the  same 
method  as  in  the  preceding.  I  have  tried  to 
show  that  the  two  fields  are  as  a  fact  identi- 
fied. The  reasons  for  the  fact  I  have  thus  far 
not  discussed,  nor  even  whether  it  may  not 
rest  on  error.  My  own  opinion  has  not  been 
expressed.  I  have  merely  wished  to  exhibit 
the  widespread  belief  that  goodness  and  de- 
voutness  are  inseparable.  But  the  deeper 
question  remains.  Why  are  the  two  identi- 
fied ?  What  is  there  in  the  nature  of  the  one 
which  is  also  found  in  the  other  ?  A  simi- 
lar question  arose  in  the  analysis  of  beauty. 
Noticing  its  alliance  with  goodness,  we  were 
obliged  to  take  a  beautiful  object  and  ask 
what  it  contained  which  belonged  also  to  the 
moral  field.  Something  analogous  must  be 
attempted  now.  As  I  cannot  take  a  religious 
object,  I  take  a  religious  definition.  Among 
the  many  expositions  of  religion  we  will,  some- 
what arbitrarily,  select  one  and  ask  whether  in 


ETHICS  AND  BELIGION  149 

that  definition  is  included  —  and  essentially 
included  —  what  would  also  need  to  be  in- 
cluded in  any  definition  we  might  fashion  of 
the  moral  life.  I  say  we  shall  need  to  choose 
our  definition  of  religion  somewhat  arbitrarily, 
for  otherwise  this  lecture  would  become  a  trea- 
tise on  the  philosophy  of  religion.  Ethics,  not 
religion,  is  the  theme  of  our  study.  I  look 
into  religion  only  to  find  how  far  it  can  illu- 
minate ethics.  Our  inquiry  will  be  most 
easily  kept  within  bounds  if  dogmatically  I 
assume  a  certain  notable  definition  as  on  the 
whole  that  which  suits  me  best,  and  proceed 
directly  to  inquire  how  far  it  covers  also  the 
case  of  the  moral  life.  I  will,  however,  before 
closing  the  subject,  take  up  one  or  two  other 
famous  definitions  and  see  if  they  corroborate 
the  one  which  I  have  arbitrarily  chosen. 

VI 

Lucretius  defined  religion  in  words  which 
have  deeply  influenced  twenty  centuries: 
"  Primus  in  orbe  timor  fecit  deos."  What 
brought  gods  before  us  first  was  fear.  Be- 
cause we  are  born  to  trouble,  the  idea  of  God 
has  visited  us.  At  first  the  statement  may 
shock,  and  make  us  disposed  to  deny  it.     But 


150  TEE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

my  impression  is  that  the  more  we  reflect,  the 
more  we  shall  find  ourselves  compelled  to  ac- 
cept it  and  to  own  that  at  the  heart  of  reli- 
gion Hes  fear.  It  is  difficult  to  judge  a 
matter  so  personal  without  bias.  But  if  we 
try  to  do  so,  we  shall  find,  I  believe,  that  as 
a  fact  our  thoughts  of  religion  have  hitherto 
been  closely  associated  with  a  sense  of  our 
own  weakness. 

To  test  the  case,  let  us  ask  under  what 
circumstances  feelings  of  devoutness  come 
easiest  ?  Is  it  when  we  are  strong  in  body, 
masterful,  possessed  of  abundant  wealth,  with 
all  the  events  of  life  turning  out  for  us  fortu- 
nately, and  we  thinking  of  ourselves  as  crea- 
tures of  natural  good  luck  on  whom  evils  do 
not  easily  fall  —  is  it  then  that  God  seems 
nearest  ?  Few  would  say  so ;  rather,  "  It  is 
easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a 
needle  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven."  When  sickness  threat- 
ens and  we  feel  our  helplessness,  then  it  is 
that  —  even  if  not  our  practice  before  —  we 
incline  to  pray.  We  say,  "  I  am  weak ;  Thou 
art  strong."  In  the  call  for  help  we  reach 
the  clearest  consciousness  of  God.  An  old 
English  poet  has  said  that  we  turn  to  God 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  161 

"when  griefs  make  us  tame."  How  excellent 
the  expression  !  When  strong  and  boisterous, 
we  seem  to  do  very  well  without  God.  But 
when  we  are  tamed  by  grief,  he  seems  close 
at  hand  —  or  we  wish  he  were. 

And  this,  which  is  true  in  our  own  case,  is 
doubly  true  in  reference  to  others  for  whom 
we  fear.  I  love  my  father,  and  see  him  suf- 
fering ;  he  has  suddenly  lost  his  property,  has 
forfeited  his  repute  among  men.  Witnessing 
his  distress  and  knowing  how  helpless  I  am 
to  aid,  the  very  sense  of  that  helplessness  ex- 
torts a  call  for  higher  aid.  I  can  hardly  im- 
agine any  one  standing  by  the  bedside  of  a 
sick  friend  without  longing  for  God.  Piti- 
able scenes  cry  out  for  him. 

And  something  similar  appears  when  we 
are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  huge  forces 
of  nature,  so  much  more  powerful  than  we. 
As  we  stand  on  the  shore  of  the  outstretching 
sea,  the  sense  of  its  immensity  brings  home 
to  us  our  littleness,  and  in  the  perception  of 
that  littleness  God  is  near.  Who  can  look 
into  the  starry  sky,  thinking  either  of  the 
multitude  of  worlds  there  or  of  the  enormous 
tracts  of  space  required  by  that  multitude, 
and  keep  thoughts  of  God  banished  from  his 


152  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

mind?  Indeed,  whenever  we  become  small, 
God  becomes  large.  In  some  striking  verses 
Arthur  Hugh  Clough  considers  who  are  the 
believers  and  who  the  disbeHevers  in  God. 
After  describing  those  who  have  little  sense 
of  divine  things,  he  inquires  who  still  in  every 
community  maintain  belief  in  God?  These 
he  finds  to  be 

"  Country  folks  who  live  beneath 
The  shadow  of  the  steeple  ; 
The  parson  and  the  parson's  wife, 
And  mostly  married  people  ; 

"  Yonths  green  and  happy  in  first  love, 
So  thankful  for  illusion  ; 
And  men  caught  out  in  what  the  world 
Calls  guilt,  in  first  confusion  ; 

"  And  almost  every  one  when  age, 

Disease,  or  sorrows  strike  him 

Inclines  to  think  there  is  a  God, 

Or  something  very  like  Him." 

These  have  a  keen  sense  of  God,  because 
they  have  a  keen  sense  of  their  own  limita- 
tions :  the  parson,  hemmed  in  by  an  ecclesias- 
tical system ;  married  people,  checked  by  one 
another  ;  the  yoimg  man  falling  in  love,  know- 
ing how  poor  he  is  and  how  rich  he  wishes  to 
be  ;  and  whoever  is  oppressed  by  sin,  disease, 
sorrow,  or  age.     All  these  persons,  unHke  as 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  153 

they  are  in  other  respects,  are  ahke  in  this, 
that  they  find  themselves  behind  bars.  They 
are  small.  And  in  that  apprehension  of  re- 
striction comes  the  thought  of  God's  greatness. 
Now  I  agree  —  in  fact,  I  said  so  at  the  be- 
ginning of  this  section — that  views  of  this 
sort  have  in  them  much  that  is  repulsive.  But 
we  are  not  trying  to  discover  what  we  like 
and  what  we  do  not  like.  We  want  the  truth. 
And  it  does  seem  to  me  clear  that  this  sense 
of  our  weakness  in  connection  with  God's 
power  —  just  the  conjunction  which  is  the 
essential  element  of  fear  —  is  fundamental  to 
rehgion  everywhere. 

VII 

But  this  is  only  half  of  our  question.  Per- 
ceiving that  as  a  fact  morality  and  religion 
are  widely  believed  to  be  but  different  names 
for  the  same  thing,  we  sought  something 
closely  connected  with  the  essence  of  rehgion 
and  were  then  to  ask  whether  anything  like 
it  is  involved  in  the  essence  of  morahty.  The 
first  part  of  that  question  has  been  answered. 
Fear  is  wrought  into  the  foundations  of  reli- 
gion. But  how  fundamental  is  it  in  ethics? 
I  must  appeal  here,  also,  to  experience.    When 


154  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

we  do  a  right  deed  in  obedience  to  duty,  does 
it  not  appear  as  in  some  sense  a  setting  of  our- 
selves aside  as  if  we  were  beings  too  small  to 
be  considered  ?  I  am  not  to  be  counted  im- 
portant ;  the  duty  is  to  be  counted  important ; 
and  whether  I  like  or  do  not  like  to  do  it  is 
of  no  consequence.  Every  duty  announces 
something  as  due  from  us  to  beings  of  some 
sort  or  other  whose  claims  are  superior  to  our 
own.  I  will  not  pause  to  inquire  to  whom 
that  debt  runs.  Perhaps  it  is  the  social  or- 
ganism, perhaps  the  greatest  happiness  of  the 
greatest  number,  perhaps  the  perfection  of  the 
individual  or  the  race,  perhaps  the  command 
of  God  himself,  which  makes  the  claim.  In 
any  case,  we  are  called  on  to  know  ourselves 
little,  and  something  else  large.  Accordingly, 
all  of  us  are  restive  under  duty,  feel  a  certain 
irksomeness  in  it,  and  are  disposed  to  assert 
our  own  importance.  But  duty  is  unyielding, 
and  regardlessly  says,  "  No.  Set  yourself  en- 
tirely aside.  Do  not  ask  what  you  want,  or 
whether  you  are  Hkely  to  get  it.  Necessity 
is  laid  upon  you.  Obey."  That  is  the  un- 
sympathetic voice  of  duty  everywhere ;  and  it 
awakens  in  us  that  very  feeling  of  shrinking, 
that  very  sense  of  being  small  in  the  presence 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  166 

of  something  large,  which  appeared  in  religion 
as  fear.  Fear  is  at  the  heart  of  both  religion 
and  morality,  fear  as  I  have  defined  it  —  the 
sense  of  ourselves  when  dominated  by  what  is 
more  powerful.  So  much  for  the  connection 
of  the  two  fields  through  the  principle  of  fear. 

vin 

Yet  I  should  be  sorry  if  this  conclusion 
were  heartily  accepted.  Even  if  my  presenta- 
tion has  been  convincing,  and  fear  is  now  con- 
fessed to  be  deeply  imbedded  in  religion,  I 
hope  it  will  be  felt  that  the  account  is  in- 
complete, and  that  religion  contains  elements 
much  more  important  and  ennobling  than  fear. 
The  Psalmist  says  that  "  Fear  is  the  begin- 
ning of  wisdom,"  evidently  meaning  by  wis- 
dom, divine  wisdom,  reverence  for  God.  His 
thought  might  seem  the  same  as  that  of  Lu- 
cretius. But  in  the  Psalmist's  mind,  fear  is 
only  the  beginning  of  wisdom.  To  argue  that 
it  is  the  end  —  a  substantial  portion  of  com- 
pleted religion,  as  I  appear  to  have  done  — 
is  to  produce  a  sense  of  bewilderment.  The 
hearer  may  feel  that  he  ought  to  be  convinced, 
but  the  proved  conclusion  will  hardly  fail  to 
be  revolting.    In  such  cases  of  a  divided  mind, 


156  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

■where  the  results  of  reasoning  clash  with  high 
instincts,  it  is  usually  well  to  turn  back  and 
examine  whether  there  may  not  have  been 
ambiguity  in  some  of  the  fundamental  terms 
employed. 

I  believe  the  word  fear  to  be  ambiguous. 
There  are  two  kinds  of  fear.  When  we  be- 
come convinced  that  fear  is  essential  to  reh- 
gion,  we  are  thinking  of  one  sort  of  fear; 
and  when  again  we  draw  back  and  find  the 
doctrine  of  fear  abhorrent,  we  are  chiefly 
influenced  by  the  thought  of  a  different  sort 
of  fear.  On  the  clear  understanding  of  these 
two  sorts  of  fear  depends  in  large  measure 
our  comprehension  of  the  nature  of  religion 
and  our  just  discernment  of  the  contrast  be- 
tween religion  and  morality.  To  bring  the 
matter  most  transparently  before  us,  suppose 
we  look  at  it  in  a  field  where  prejudice  can- 
not disturb.  Questions  which,  like  those  of 
rehgion,  affect  our  deepest  interests,  are  dif- 
ficult to  look  at  without  distortion.  I  will, 
therefore,  leave  these  higher  regions,  and  tak- 
ing up  an  altogether  trivial  case,  remote  from 
everything  about  which  we  might  have  strong 
feeling,  through  it  attempt  to  work  out  defini- 
tions of  the  two  sorts  of   fear.     Afterwards 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  157 

we  can  adapt  these  definitions  to  the  weightier 
matters  of  ethics  and  religion. 

IX 
The  other  night  I  received  an  invitation  to 
a  party,  and  was  not  much  pleased  to  read 
it.  It  is  not  my  habit  to  frequent  such  fes- 
tivities. I  am  a  quiet  student,  preferring 
my  library  and  armchair  to  everything  else 
and  only  there  feeling  really  at  ease  ;  still,  it 
seemed  not  quite  possible  to  avoid  presenting 
myself  on  this  disturbing  occasion.  Sadly 
I  got  into  that  unwonted  article,  my  dress- 
suit,  and  moved  off  forebodingly  to  the  car- 
riage-becrowded  door.  I  was  not  reassured 
on  entering,  for  the  place  was  briUiant,  and 
everybody,  except  myself,  appeared  altogether 
at  his  best.  I  felt  awkward,  did  not  know 
what  to  do  with  my  arms  and  legs,  and  began 
to  wish  I  had  not  come.  Forcing  a  smile, 
however,  I  shook  hands  with  my  hostess,  and 
then  slunk  into  a  corner  hoping  to  be  un- 
observed. Gay  couples  swept  past  me,  airily 
enjoying  themselves  and  sharpening  my  pangs. 
It  made  me  wretched  to  see  how  thoroughly 
at  their  ease  these  people  could  be.  Their 
talk    was    as    distressing   as    their    bearing. 


158  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

Each  had  something  neat  to  say,  something 
that  struck  me  as  enormously  clever  yet  quite 
unforced.  Their  casual  remarks,  thrown  out 
as  they  approached  and  drifted  away  from 
one  another,  were  fitted  to  stir  gayety  but  not 
to  demand  reflection.  Repeatedly  I  said  to 
myself  that  I  could  not  have  contrived  any- 
thing so  suitable  if  I  had  had  half  an  hour  to 
think  it  over.  And  the  more  I  vexed  myself 
with  wondering  what  remarks  I  had  better 
make,  the  less  I  could  discover  what  would  do. 
I  never  before  judged  myself  quite  so  fool- 
ish. As  the  bewildering  brilliancy  increased, 
I  sidled  nearer  the  door.  When  it  opened  I 
managed  to  creep  out,  —  unseen,  I  hoped,  — 
and  on  the  street  found  myself  for  the  first 
time  at  ease. 

It  had  been  a  tremulous  evening.  I  could 
not  imagine  how  I  had  ever  permitted  myself 
to  appear  in  such  company.  Plainly  I  had 
no  business  there,  being  quite  too  small  and 
rigid  a  person  for  so  complex  an  occasion. 
My  little  life  is  marked  out  for  definite  duties. 
I  go  through  them  very  well.  But  the  mo- 
ment I  try  to  swell  myself  to  the  proportions 
of  a  man  of  the  world,  able  to  join  in  the 
give  and  take  of  society,  with  something  ever 


ETHICS  AND  BELIQION  169 

on  the  tongue  apt  to  the  minute,  at  ease  with 
myself  no  matter  who  appears,  then  I  dis- 
cover how  small  I  really  am.  And  this  was 
the  source  of  my  terror,  that  I,  essentially 
small,  mingling  with  large  persons,  found 
that  the  contrast  between  them  and  me  re- 
vealed my  true  size.  I  was  thus  brought  face 
to  face  with  my  smallness  and  was  shown  how 
narrowly  limited  my  life  is.  Through  the 
easy  ability  of  others  I  discovered  my  incom- 
petence. And  that  was  fear — the  apprehen- 
sion of  greatness  from  which  I  was  shut  out. 
In  their  own  kind,  in  naturalness  of  social 
approach,  these  people  were  great.  But  I  was 
little  and  aloof,  though  I  had  not  observed 
my  exclusion  until  I  sought  to  identify  myself 
with  them. 

Suppose  some  gentle  soul  had  noticed  my 
timidity  and,  audacious  himself  in  the  service 
of  weakness,  had  approached  me  and  tried 
to  relieve  my  discomfort.  By  what  means 
might  he  have  restored  my  composure  and 
abolished  my  fears  ?  He  might  have  said, 
"  I  know  what  makes  you  fear.  Up  to  this 
time  you  have  met  few  ladies  and  gentle- 
men in  society,  and  naturally  you  are  a  little 
abashed  at  their  swift  ways.     Their  graceful 


160  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

alertness  in  giving  each  other  pleasure  at 
momentary  meetings  makes  you  feel  small. 
But  has  it  occurred  to  you  that  that  easy  gen- 
tleman, receiving  with  so  much  assurance  the 
admiration  of  all,  is  but  an  enlarged  picture 
of  yourself  ?  There  is  nothing  in  him  that 
you  may  not  be.  You  are  in  error  in  ima- 
gining that  between  him  and  you  there  is  a 
great  gulf  fixed.  It  is  merely  that  hitherto 
you  have  turned  but  little  in  his  direction. 
You  have  thought  of  yourself  as  a  recluse, 
imagining  that  his  refinement  and  ease  is  the 
peculiar  heritage  of  a  special  class.  Having 
allowed  yourself  seclusion,  you  are  now  ex- 
periencing the  sense  of  estrangement  which 
privacy  naturally  brings.  But  see  what 
powers  this  man  has  brought  out  in  himself. 
He  shows  you  how  to  do  it.  Think  what 
you  might  become  if  you  were  willing  to 
emerge  from  your  library.  If  instead  of  re- 
garding him  as  your  foe,  you  had  looked 
upon  him  as  your  pattern,  your  exemplar,  you 
might  have  enjoyed  yourself.  He  is  your 
best  friend.  You  say  you  feel  yourseK  small? 
What  of  it,  if  you  are  on  the  way  to  large- 
ness ?  Do  not  fear.  There  is  nothing  aUen 
or   hostile   to  you   in   his  excellence.     It  is 


ETHICS  AND  BELIGION  161 

yours,  if  you  will  take  it.  Think  of  him  as 
a  revelation  of  yourself  and  fear  will  cease. 
He  who  terrifies  you  will  make  you  bold." 


Such  thoughts  transform  fear  into  love. 
For  when  we  talk  of  loving  we  mean  that  we 
have  found  some  one  greater  than  we  in 
whose  life  we  can  so  merge  our  own  that  his 
will  become  ours,  and  we,  through  union  with 
him,  shall  be  able  to  escape  our  own  pettiness. 
That  is  the  essence  of  love,  identification  of 
one's  self  with  another  deemed  our  better. 
Pityingly  we  sometimes  love  those  beneath 
us.  But  love's  fullness  is  not  come  till  we 
love  one  to  whom  we  look  up,  identifying 
ourselves  with  him  however  large  he  seems, 
and  however  small  we.  That  largeness  of 
his,  first  causing  us  fear,  love  adopts  for  its 
own.  Accordingly  fear  —  fear  of  the  old 
debasing  sort  —  is  set  aside.  Yet  fear  of  an- 
other kind  is  not  altogether  absent.  The  poet 
Spenser  calls  his  lady,  "  My  dear  dread,"  an 
exquisitely  truthful  contradiction !  Knowing 
how  pxu'e  and  exalted  she  is,  and  how  ignoble 
he,  he  finds  her  awe-inspiring.  And  such  a 
contradiction  is  always  involved  in  love.     We 


162  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

abhor  ourselves  when  we  love,  but  we  respect 
ourselves  too,  as  we  were  never  respected  be- 
fore. In  the  new  Hght  that  has  dawned  we 
look  with  scorn  on  our  old  separate  and  actual 
self,  while  the  presence  of  the  one  we  love 
opens  a  vista  into  regions  which  we  had  never 
expected  to  enter  and  brings  us  incredible 
honor.  Both  elements  are  present,  dignity 
and  abasement.  Love  is  not  love  which  has 
not  holy  fear  at  the  heart  of  it. 

But  evidently  this  fear  at  the  heart  of  love 
is  of  a  different  sort  from  the  fear  I  expe- 
rienced at  my  party.  Unfortunately  in  Eng- 
lish we  have  no  two  sharply  contrasted  terms 
for  naming;  these  unlike  fears.  The  Ger- 
mans  are  luckier  than  we.  They  have  the 
two  words  Furcht  and  Ehrfurcht, — cowardly 
fear  and  the  fear  of  honor.  One  is  the  fear 
of  him  who  knows  he  is  fixedly  a  little  per- 
son and  who  accordingly  hates  the  excellence 
from  which  he  feels  himself  debarred.  The 
other  is  the  noble  fear  of  one  who  delights  in 
all  that  is  superior  to  what  he  now  possesses, 
because  he  sees  in  it  his  own  large  possibili- 
ties. How  unlike  they  are  —  the  fear  that 
springs  from  exclusion,  the  fear  that  springs 
from  identifying  admiration.     That  is  a  splen- 


ETHICS  AND  BELIGION  163 

did  saying,  —  I  believe  it  is  Goethe's,  —  there 
is  no  protection  against  excellence  except 
love.  Excellence  is  an  august  and  terrible 
affair  to  him  who  beHeves  it  alien  to  himself. 
It  arouses  an  envious  terror,  as  for  something 
we  cannot  possess.  Hopelessly  outside  us, 
such  excellence  behttles  us  at  every  turn. 
The  only  way  to  escape  its  debasing  terrors 
is  to  break  down  the  wall  of  separation,  to 
enter  in  and  claim  excellence  for  our  own. 
And  such  identification  with  what  is  admired 
as  superior  is  love.  Love  is  community,  an 
upward-looking  community.  So  the  apostle 
writes,  and  much  in  Goethe's  spirit,  "  Love 
envieth  not."  Everything  except  love  does 
envy.  But  the  lover  cannot.  In  him  there 
is  no  place  for  behttlement  through  separat- 
ing fears.  He  finds  the  quahties  of  his  loved 
one  beneficently  helpful,  and  would  rather 
have  them  where  they  are  than  in  his  own 
possession.  Even  in  feeling  his  weakness,  he 
exults. 

Such  are  the  two  contrasted  kinds  of  fear. 
I  believe  they  both  appear  in  religion.  In 
fact,  I  suspect  we  might  divide  the  religions 


164  THE  FIELD   OF  ETHICS 

of  the  world  on  this  basis.  Some  of  them 
we  call  pagan,  others  universal  or  ethical; 
and  the  distinction  marks  the  different  sorts  of 
fear  which  they  contain.  The  pagan's  God 
is  alien  to  himself.  He  never  knows  what 
that  God  of  his  is  going  to  do.  God  is  a 
powerful  being,  but  irrational  and  arbitrary. 
His  worshiper  can  only  humble  himself  and 
conciliate,  studying  how  to  avoid  offense. 
Between  God  and  himself  there  is  no  inti- 
macy or  friendly  trust.  What  he  would  Hke 
best  would  be  to  get  away  from  God,  to  hide 
himself,  and  be  allowed  to  go  his  own  way. 
This  being  impossible,  his  religion  is  largely 
an  affair  of  self-abasement.  He  will  sacrifice 
what  he  prizes  most,  in  order  to  show  of  how 
little  consequence  he  is.  Then  perhaps  God 
will  not  harm  him.  That  is  his  conception  of 
religion,  a  religion  of  cowardly  fear. 

The  noble  rehgions,  on  the  other  hand,  — 
and  there  are  many  of  them, — recognize  the 
inherent  likeness  of  God  and  man.  Their 
worshipers  look  upon  God  as  their  father, 
a  being  essentially  akin  to  themselves.  In 
his  image  they  are  made,  though  they  are 
far  from  filling  out  that  image.  He  is  high 
and  lifted  up,  the  object  of  awful  admiration. 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  166 

Yet  in  their  little  degrees  they  identify  them- 
selves with  Him,  and  in  Him  alone  can  behold 
themselves  complete.  The  goal  of  their  am- 
bition is  union  with  Him,  and  they  cannot  be 
at  rest  except  in  his  presence.  Between  God 
and  man  there  is  no  other  separation  than 
that  of  degree,  and  to  become  more  completely 
a  man  is  forever  to  approximate  godhood. 
Such  an  attitude  of  mind  does  not  exclude 
fear,  which  we  have  seen  is  always  the  sense 
of  smallness  in  the  presence  of  greatness. 
But  the  fear  is  of  the  noble  sort  which  ador- 
ingly contemplates  the  revealer  of  its  small- 
ness, finding  in  him  a  refuge  and  the  means 
of  its  own  enlargement.  Fear  is  thus  trans- 
muted into  love  — ■  which  in  all  its  higher 
forms  retains  fear  of  the  reverential  sort. 
Fear  we  called  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 
Love  is  its  conclusion.  Love  is  the  fulfill- 
ment of  law. 

Here,  then,  we  see  the  deeper  meaning  of 
the  statement  that  fear  begets  gods ;  the 
deeper  meaning,  and  also  the  reason  why  the 
saying  instinctively  offends  us.  The  statement 
is  a  profound  one,  though  ambiguous;  for 
each  of  its  two  meanings  accurately  describes 
one  side  of  the  religious  life.     Ignoble  fear 


166  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

begins  the  process.  Greatness  when  first 
seen  is  overpowering  and  must  impress  us  as 
beyond  our  capacity.  He  who  sees  no  farther 
is  behttled  and  cannot  escape  a  panic-stricken 
life.  We  must  come  to  recognize  the  great- 
ness which  terrifies  as  after  all  a  presentation 
of  our  possible  greatness,  and  therefore  the 
object  of  reverential  love. 

XII 

But  our  original  question  is  not  yet  quite 
answered.  To  determine  whether  morahty  and 
rehgion  are  the  same  thing,  as  there  seemed 
much  reason  to  suppose,  we  sought  to  find  the 
nature  of  religion.  We  have  now  seen  that 
fear  is  at  its  heart,  fear  in  its  twofold  form. 
But  what  is  the  nature  of  morality  ?  In  the 
obligations  of  duty  do  we  find  anything  which 
identifies  the  moral  with  the  religious  life  ? 
Once  more  I  find  difficulty  in  keeping  the 
discussion  within  bounds.  Fully  to  show  why 
we  do  right  and  what  we  mean  by  ought 
would  require  a  volume.  But,  without  over- 
running our  limits,  I  think  it  can  be  seen  how 
the  double  principle  of  fear  is  involved  in 
obligation.  Every  child,  I  suppose,  feels  the 
command  of  duty  obnoxious  when,  about  to 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION        '  167 

carry  out  his  own  strong  desire,  he  is  checked 
by  his  parent.  An  important  matter  it  is  in  the 
training  of  a  child  to  teach  him  that  he  is  not 
of  much  consequence.  The  child  is  naturally 
bumptious,  imagines  that  the  whole  world  be- 
longs to  him  and  is  there  for  little  else  than 
to  wait  on  his  wishes.  Advance  in  moral  ma- 
turity discloses  a  world  very  large,  very  much 
occupied,  and  in  it  himself  a  comparatively 
unimportant  person.  It  has  its  own  laws,  not 
made  by  him  yet  by  him  to  be  obeyed.  There 
arises  in  the  child  a  sense  of  limitation,  a  feel- 
ing of  oppression,  by  which  his  early  buoyancy 
is  checked.  Becoming  acquainted  with  duty 
is  a  sobering  process,  and  obedience  contains 
a  large  element  of  ignoble  fear. 

Nor  is  this  quickly  outgrown.  Most  of  us 
are  still  visited  by  a  feeHng  of  the  ahen  and 
repressive  character  of  our  duties.  From  time 
to  time,  at  least,  they  strike  us  as  a  nuisance 
from  which  we  should  well  be  rid.  But  he 
who  is  not  naturally  servile  does  not  rest  in 
forced  performances,  even  if  he  does  not  defi- 
antly cast  off  all  bonds.  He  makes  intimate 
acquaintance  with  duty,  and  learns  how  in  all 
genuine  cases  of  it  he  is  f  ulfilUng  himself  and 
not  becoming  restricted.     Our  obligations,  in 


168  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

fact,  mark  our  straight  path  toward  large- 
ness. In  some  degree  and  under  certain  as^ 
pects,  most  persons  of  maturity  know  this. 
We  have  learned  the  possibility  of  loving 
righteousness,  and  have  begun  to  perceive 
that  it  is  not  exterior  and  ahen  to  us.  But, 
even  so,  we  retain  reverence  for  the  right, 
have  respect  for  it  and  awe  in  its  presence. 
For  it  is  not  we  who  create  our  duties.  They 
exist,  and  call  us  up  to  their  august  compan- 
ionship. Noble  fear  is  as  essentially  con- 
nected with  the  moral  life  as  it  is  with  the 
religious.  There  is  perfect  parallehsm.  Fear 
directs  them  both,  a  fear  which  may  undoubt- 
edly be  exalted  into  love,  but  which  in  that 
ennobled  form  remains  awesome  and  com- 
manding. 

xni 

Such  seems  to  be  our  conclusion ;  and  this 
analysis  may  explain  the  reasons  why  in  every 
age  there  has  been  a  large  consensus  of  opin- 
ion that  religion  and  morality  are  one  and  the 
same  thing.  But  I  am  not  altogether  satisfied. 
Recognizing,  as  fully  as  I  have  expressed  here, 
the  close  affinities  of  the  two  fields,  I  cannot 
fail  to  see  certain  divergencies  also.  To  these 
I  devote  the  following  lecture. 


V 
ETHICS  AND  RELIGION 

DIVERGENCIES 


ETHICS   AND   RELIGION 
DIVERGENCIES 

I 

In  tracing  the  divergencies  of  ethics  and 
religion  it  will  be  well  to  pursue  the  course 
we  have  followed  before ;  that  is,  we  will  first 
demonstrate  as  a  fact  that  the  two  fields  are 
not  precisely  identical,  and  afterwards  look 
into  the  meaning  of  this  fact  and  seek  the 
reasons  for  it. 

If,  then,  I  ask  myself  whether  as  a  fact  a 
man  when  most  moral  is  also  particularly  reH- 
gious,  and  the  farther  question,  whether,  when 
particularly  religious,  he  becomes  by  that  cir- 
cumstance peculiarly  moral,  I  must  say  there  is 
a  great  deal  which  points  the  other  way.  We 
will  take  up  the  two  inquiries  separately :  that 
is,  our  first  question  shall  be  whether  when  a 
man  is  peculiarly  faithful  in  the  performance 


172  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

of  his  special  work,  God  is  naturally  in  all  his 
thoughts?  It  seems  to  me  that,  strangely 
enough,  this  is  not  the  case.  Why  it  is 
not,  we  must  consider  hereafter.  But  taking 
actual  occurrences  and  asking  ourselves  with- 
out prejudice  this  single  question,  I  beheve 
we  are  shut  up  to  a  negative  answer. 

Here  is  a  surgeon  engaged  in  his  perilous 
art.  The  slightest  divergence  of  the  knife  to 
right  or  left  will  have  serious  consequences. 
While  performing  this  his  special  task,  steer- 
ing that  knife  exactly  true,  does  he  fill  his 
mind  with  thoughts  of  God  and  seek  to  lose 
his  own  small  life  in  that  of  the  infinite  One  ? 
I  do  not  think  so.  It  would  be  disastrous  if 
he  did.  I  suspect  his  thoughts  can  hardly 
travel  so  far  from  that  knife  as  to  consider 
even  the  poor  sufPerer  before  him.  I  doubt 
if  he  greatly  pities  the  patient  on  whom  he  is 
engaged,  or  takes  much  satisfaction  in  restor- 
ing him  to  health.  Before  he  began  his  work 
he  may  have  had  compassionate  thoughts, 
and  may  have  regarded  himself  as  the  ser- 
vant of  God  in  conflict  with  hated  distress. 
And  possibly  afterwards,  looking  back  upon 
his  work,  he  may  give  it  approval,  and  feel 
that  God's  finger  directed  every  curve  of  the 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  173 

knife.  Both  of  the  two,  the  sense  of  special 
duty  and  the  sense  of  dependence  on  God, 
may  well  exist  in  the  same  person.  But  do 
they  present  exactly  the  same  point  of  view  ? 
Does  he  who  is  thinking  of  the  one  necessa- 
rily think  of  the  other?  I  hold  that  as  he  cuts 
he  may  wisely  exclude  all  thought  of  both 
God  and  his  neighbor,  being  simply  a  surgeon 
and  nothing  more.  He  requires  a  certain 
narrowing  of  his  vision,  a  certain  exclusion 
of  the  infinite  aspects  of  his  task,  in  order  to 
perform  that  task  well. 

Somewhat  similar  conditions  will  be  found 
in  almost  every  exigency  of  life.  The  painter 
ehciting  beauty,  the  musician  eliciting  music, 
must  be  impassioned  for  beauty  and  music, 
and  for  nothing  else.  If  the  artist  should 
care  less  about  producing  beauty  and  more 
about  companionship  with  God,  he  might 
have  a  more  exalted  aim  than  the  seeker  after 
colors.  But  that  aim  will  not  make  him  a  good 
artist.  When  he  is  painting,  colors  and  lines 
must  claim  him.  He,  too,  has  need  of  narrow- 
ness, and  must  let  infinite  things  alone.  Or 
take  the  humbler  departments  of  Hfe.  When 
the  carpenter  drives  his  nail,  is  he  not  think- 
ing simply  of  the  straight  course  of  that  nail 


174  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

and  nothing  else?  He  cannot  at  such  mo- 
ments meditate  on  divine  commands.  I  grant 
he  will  be  a  poor  carpenter  if  sometime  in  his 
life  he  has  not  asked  himself  what  is  his  place 
in  God's  kingdom ;  and  has  not  seen  that  to 
drive  nails  straight,  to  do  thorough  carpentry, 
is  the  best  service  he  can  offer.  These  are 
wise  thoughts  for  seasons  of  leisure.  But 
they  interfere  with  work.  When  driving  nails, 
I  should  advise  him  to  withdraw  his  attention 
from  the  Most  High.  The  case  is  the  same 
in  all  life's  operations.  The  particular  thing 
before  us  demands  a  narrowed  attention. 

I  think,  too,  we  must  have  been  struck  with 
the  fact  that  many  persons  whose  characters 
are  excellent  and  for  whom  we  have  great 
reverence,  seem  to  get  along  pretty  well  with- 
out much  consciousness  of  God.  Few  persons 
in  my  own  world  have  seemed  more  worthy  of 
honor  than  my  old  nurse.  She  brought  me 
up,  and  to  her  I  owe  ahnost  as  much  as  I  do 
to  my  mother.  She  always  impressed  me  as 
about  the  greatest  saint  I  knew,  so  devoid  of 
selfishness,  so  intent  on  cheerful  and  intelli- 
gent service.  But  she  had  little  time  for  com- 
munion with  God  and  did  not,  so  far  as  I 
could  see,  suffer  from  the  lack.     She  was  too 


.      ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  175 

much  occupied  with  seeing  whether  I  had 
proper  stockings  on,  with  contriving  how  to 
quiet  my  petulance  and  get  my  dinner  ready 
at  the  right  minute,  to  be  much  concerned 
with  her  soul  or  its  relations  to  God.  She 
simply  went  about  her  work.  Most  of  us  have 
had  similar  experiences,  and  some  of  us  have 
been  a  good  deal  puzzled  by  them. 

n 

On  the  other  hand,  many  of  us  have  known 
persons  who  struck  us  as  extremely  religious, 
but  whom  we  should  not  have  been  quite  will- 
ing to  trust.  Their  rehgious  emotions  were  a 
good  deal  divorced  from  moral  responsibility. 
The  newspapers  are  fond  of  reporting  such 
cases  and  telling  how  the  defaulting  cashier 
was  superintendent  of  a  Sunday-school.  The 
negro  on  his  way  home  from  prayer-meeting 
stops  to  steal  a  chicken  from  the  roost.  Sup- 
posing the  newspapers  do  not  exaggerate,  and 
that  our  own  experience  suppUes  corrobora- 
tive cases,  a  simple  explanation  is  ready.  Since 
everybody  assumes  the  close  connection  of 
morahty  and  religion,  immoral  men  shrewdly 
put  on  a  religious  cloak.  This  does  not  show 
that  the  devout  and  the  moral  are  independ- 


176  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

ent  matters,  for  the  defaulter  was  not  really 
devout.  He  was  only  pretending  to  be.  Had 
he  been  so,  he  would  have  felt  the  incongru- 
ity of  his  evil  act. 

This  explanation  is  undoubtedly  sufficient, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  show  that  it  is  untrue, 
but  it  seems  to  me  improbably  easy.  I  do 
not  find  hypocrites  so  common.  It  requires 
a  high  degree  of  abstinence  and  self-denial  to 
make  a  first-class  hypocrite,  —  that  is,  a  man 
who  will  steadily  consent  not  to  lead  his  own 
fife.  To  most  of  us  our  own  life  is  precious. 
We  want  to  utter  the  thing  that  is  in  our 
minds,  and  not  go  through  the  world  playing 
a  part  for  which  we  do  not  care.  In  the  long 
run,  this  demands  too  much  constraint  and 
too  much  skill.  Momentary  pretenses  we  all 
shp  into ;  but  these  are  very  unlike  the  cohe- 
rent hypocrisies  which  the  present  explanation 
requires.  These  are  surely  of  rarer  occurrence 
than  are  the  wrong-doings  of  the  devout. 

I  cannot  fail  to  see  that  a  good  many 
persons  are,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  sincerely 
religious  when  not  quite  responsive  to  the 
demands  of  the  moral  code.  I  am  sorry  to 
say  I  find  this  true  of  myself.  At  my  times 
of   greatest  religious  exaltation  small  duties 


ETHICS  AND  BELIQION  111 

do  not  appeal  to  me  most  urgently.  There 
seems  to  be  a  kind  of  separation,  as  if  there 
were  something  in  the  nature  of  the  religious 
emotion  which  removed  me  from  earthly  du- 
ties. When  the  religious  impulse  is  strongest, 
I  am  obliged  to  be  especially  careful  if  I  would 
not  be  blind  to  the  plain  duties  of  the  day.  I 
am  much  mistaken  if  the  experience  of  other 
people  does  not  confirm  mine. 

These  considerations  seem  to  show  that 
however  close  the  two  fields  are,  religion  and 
morality,  they  are  still  distinct.  But  I  feel 
that  here,  far  more  than  in  any  preceding 
case,  it  is  difficult  to  mark  the  separation.  As 
a  fact,  we  have  seen  they  differ.  Why,  and 
in  what  respects,  we  must  now  try  to  discover. 

m 

The  points  of  difference  come  out  most 
obviously  when  we  set  a  great  rehgious  cry 
side  by  side  with  a  great  moral  one ;  and  by  a 
cry  I  mean  the  utterance  of  a  distressed  and 
aspiring  soul  yearning  for  moral  or  religious 
power.  Take,  for  example,  the  cry  of  the 
Psalmist,  "Against  Thee,  Thee  only,  have  I 
sinned ! "  and  the  cry  of  Wordsworth  in  the 
Ode  to  Duty,  "  Oh,  let  my  weakness  have  an 


178  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

end ! "  The  two  refer  to  the  same  matter. 
Each  person  feels  his  imperfection.  Each 
mourns  a  departure  from  righteousness.  In 
each  a  finite  person  is  recognized  as  connected 
with  what  is  infinite,  a  connection  felt  to  he  not 
accidental  but  essential.  As  we  have  already 
seen,  neither  in  religion  nor  morality  can  the 
finite  detach  itself  from  the  infinite.  In  both 
cases  the  finite  person,  perceiving  his  imper- 
fection, seeks  refuge  in  the  perfect  one. 

But  if  the  substance  of  the  two  cries  is  the 
same,  if  they  refer  to  similar  spiritual  condi- 
tions, wherein  do  they  differ  ?  The  point  of 
view  is  different,  that  is  all.  While  each  ex- 
presses the  essential  union  of  the  finite  or  im- 
perfect being  with  the  infinite  or  perfect  one, 
yet  in  the  religious  case  the  stand  is  taken  at 
the  point  of  view  of  the  perfect  one ;  while  the 
moral  man  looks  at  it  from  the  opposite  end, 
the  point  of  view  of  the  imperfect  one.  To 
the  mind  of  the  Psalmist  the  horror  of  his 
sin  consists  in  this,  that  he  —  the  little  imper- 
fect creature  —  has  attempted  a  blow  against 
the  all-perfect  One.  He  cannot  think  of  his 
sin  as  damaging  his  brother  man,  nor  even  as 
damaging  himself.  He  himself,  his  fellow 
men,  all  imperfect  existences,  are  beings  of 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  179 

no  account.  The  only  being  of  worth  whom 
he  contemplates  is  the  Most  High.  And  the 
sin  is  wrought  against  Him.  He,  the  one  be- 
ing of  worth,  has  been  by  the  Psalmist's  deed 
declared  unworthy.  That  is  the  shocking 
thing,  that  he  has  raised  his  imperfect  hand 
against  perfection. 

Plainly  there  is  nothing  of  this  in  the  cry 
of  Wordsworth.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  con- 
ceiving of  himself  as  so  important  as  to  re- 
quire additional  strength.  "  Oh,  let  my  weak- 
ness have  an  end !  "  The  being  in  whom  he 
is  specially  interested  is  himself,  the  imper- 
fect one,  the  finite.  He  longs  to  have  a  full 
connection  estabhshed  between  himself  and 
the  perfect  one  not  for  the  sake  of  the  per- 
fect, but  of  himself,  the  imperfect.  No  less 
than  the  Psalmist  he  recognizes  the  need  of 
being  interlocked  with  the  eternal.  But  he 
starts  from  his  own  side.  His  view  is  man- 
ward  ;  the  religious  view  is  Godward.  There 
is,  accordingly,  a  sharp  contrast  while  each 
still  acknowledges  the  same  two  elements 
essentially  conjoined.  Neither  finds  one  of 
these  elements  of  any  account  parted  from 
ihe  other.  But  the  conjunction  is  reckoned 
of  consequence  by  the  religious  mind  because 


180  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

of  the  Most  High ;  by  the  moral  mind,  because 
of  us  struggling,  needy,  imperfect,  finite  crea- 
tures. And  this  contrast  is  fundamental. 
Everywhere  the  religious  soul  seeks  after 
God  as  all  in  all.  We  are  of  no  consequence. 
"  What  is  man,  that  Thou  art  mindful  of 
him  ?  "  To  lose  ourselves  in  Him,  to  abohsh 
separation,  this  has  been  the  aspiration  of 
religion  in  every  age  and  under  every  type  of 
religious  belief.  It  is  that  o/xotoxrt?  t(o  Oeco, 
or  absorption  into  God,  for  which  Plato  and 
the  mystics  long. 

Ethics  has  always  looked  at  the  matter  in 
an  entirely  different  way.  While  accepting 
the  eternal  as  that  which  alone  possesses  in- 
finite worth,  the  moralmind  has  asserted  that 
it  too  possesses  a  worth.  The  statement  is 
presiunptuous,  but  life  could  not  go  on  with- 
out it.  I  may  acknowledge  the  majestic  uni- 
tary principle  which  guides  the  world  and 
utters  itself  in  the  word  "  ought."  "  Thou 
dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong.  And 
the  most  ancient  heavens  through  thee  are 
fresh  and  strong."  Sublime,  indeed !  But  I 
also  have  my  little  world  to  guide.  My  bread 
must  be  earned,  my  clothes  kept  clean,  my 
hungry  neighbor  fed.     These  are  small  acts, 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  181 

but  they  *  are  worth  while.  They  are  not 
ignoble,  they  deserve  attention,  indeed  they 
call  for  my  best  thought.  The  moral  man  is 
always  thinking  of  matters  limited  in  time 
and  space,  limited  in  scope  of  consequence, 
limited  in  the  individuals  concerned.  But 
these  things  he  still  considers  as  of  such  worth 
that  eternal  realities  ate  regarded  only  as 
they  furnish  strength  and  order  to  these. 

Here,  then,  ethics  .diverges  from  religion 
and  takes  its  independent  path.  It  studies 
infinite  principles  so  far  as  they  receive  a  finite 
expression.  That  finite  expression  is  the  one 
important  matter.  And  this  divergence  will 
explain  some  of  the  strange  suggestions  just 
made.  I  said  that  I  thought  I  had  observed 
that  the  attitudes  of  the  moral  and  religious 
man  are  not  merely  unlike,  but  that  there  is  a 
certain  conflict  between  the  two.  The  reason 
of  this  will  be  apparent  now.  When  atten- 
tion is  turned  in  one  of  these  directions,  it  is 
in  some  degree  withdrawn  from  the  other.  I 
cannot  at  the  same  moment  be  conceiving  of 
God  as  the  only  being  of  worth,  and  yet  of 
my  life  —  this  fragmentary  life  —  as  itself  a 
matter  of  worth.  I  alternate.  Now  as  a  reli- 
gious man,  I  lay  chief  stress  on  the  one;  now 


182  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

as  a  moral  man  on  the  other.  Most  certainly 
the  two  are  inextricably  involved.  They  can- 
not be  sundered,  but  only  distinguished  by 
the  degree  of  our  attention.  I  cannot  resolve 
to  be  an  exclusively  moral  man,  paying  entire 
attention  to  finite  and  imperfect  matters ;  that 
is  nonsense.  The  relationship  to  the  perfect 
is  everywhere  presupposed,  is  expressed  in  the 
ideals  of  duty,  and  is  all  that  gives  dignity  to 
my  several  undertakings.  The  two  fields  are 
supplementary,  though  attention  is  predomi- 
nantly given  to  one  or  the  other. 

IV 

It  might  well  be  asked  which  is  the  proper 
order  of  acceptance  ?  When  we  awake  to  a 
consciousness  of  the  conjunction  of  our  lives 
with  the  life  of  the  whole,  and  see  that  it  is 
incumbent  on  us  to  serve  that  whole  while 
still  serving  ourselves  and  our  imperfect  fel- 
low men,  to  which  side  of  the  complex  demand 
shall  we  primarily  address  ourselves  ?  Shall  we 
say  we  cannot  be  moral  men  until  we  have  be- 
come religious,  or  that  we  cannot  be  religious 
until  we  have  become  moral  ?  Shall  I  throw 
myself  into  the  petty  temporal  tasks,  and 
only  after  these  are  accomplished  take  time 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  183 

to  sit  down  and  contemplate  the  infinite  One  ? 
Or  shall  I  rather  say  that  the  infinite  includes 
the  finite ;  and  that  if  I  am  filled  with  zeal 
for  the  larger,  the  smaller  will  take  care  of 
itself?  Are  not  the  religious  teachers  right 
who  declare  that  ethics  hardly  deserves  spe- 
cific study,  the  earthly  life  needing  little  care 
so  long  as  we  are  sincerely  devoted  to  the 
eternal?  Love  God,  and  do  as  you  please. 
For  my  pleasure  will  then  be  included  in  the 
pleasure  of  God ;  and  when  his  wiQ  has  be- 
come my  delight,  all  my  acts  will  be  naturally 
expressive  of  him.  Is  not  this  the  proper 
order:  first  the  large,  with  progression  through 
that  large  to  the  small  ? 

I  cannot  think  so.  To  my  mind,  the  re- 
verse is  more  nearly  the  normal  order.  We 
move  best  from  small  moral  matters  up  to  the 
larger  rehgious  ones.  I  acknowledge  that  in 
making  the  antithesis,  I  falsify.  The  two  con- 
ceptions are  auxiliary,  not  antagonistic.  The 
one  cannot  get  along  without  the  other.  I 
have  no  confidence  in  the  secularist  who  says, 
"  Intending  to  be  an  upright  man,  I  have  no 
need  of  God."  He  speaks  in  a  contradiction 
of  terms,  and  is  overlooking  elements  implied 
in  his  endeavor.     Nevertheless,  though  mu- 


184  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICa 

tual  adjustment  of  the  two  is  necessary,  with 
greater  or  less  consciousness,  it  does  appear 
to  me  that  the  chief  stress  of  attention  is 
primarily  demanded  by  the  moral  side.  We 
devote  one  day  in  seven  to  specific  worship  of 
God,  and  it  is  about  the  right  proportion. 

The  fact  is  that  the  road  down  —  the  path 
from  the  universal  to  the  particular,  from  a 
general  principle  to  its  applications,  from  an 
including  law  to  the  special  facts  included 
under  it  — is  always  peculiarly  treacherous  and 
confusing.  The  road  up  is  man's  natural  path, 
the  road  which  runs  from  particular  objects 
and  events  to  their  including  law.  He  who 
imagines  he  can  take  the  former  road,  having 
no  other  guidance  than  that  furnished  by  the 
universal  principle  itself,  assumes  that  he  has 
the  ability  to  forecast  the  precise  forms  into 
which  that  principle  divides,  and  that  he  needs 
no  suggestive  guidance  from  positive  and 
casually  presented  facts.  Nothing  short  of  a 
divine  mind  can  be  so  deductively  creative. 
No  man  who  has  comprehended  the  law  of 
gravitation  can  discover  in  it  a  particular  fall- 
ing apple.  Love  of  humanity  does  not  of  it- 
self breed  consideration  for  Thomas  or  Susan. 
Nor  will  allegiance  to  God  at  once  disclose 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  186 

what  particular  act  any  given  instant  demands. 
To  hit  this  requires  a  kind  of  independent 
and  supplementary  interest  in  the  instant 
itself.  The  special  situation  must  be  studied, 
and  attention  be  for  the  moment  heartily  and 
somewhat  exclusively  addressed  to  it.  For 
purposes  of  clearness  I  overstate  the  contrast. 
A  fact  without  a  law  is  as  nonsensical  as  a 
law  without  a  fact.  God  and  his  world  are 
not  separable.  But  while  in  the  order  of 
nature  universals  and  particulars  are  always 
conjoined,  in  our  comprehension  they  often 
temporarily  faU  apart,  and  minds  peculiarly 
fitted  to  grasp  the  one  miss  the  other.  It  is 
an  important  question,  therefore,  by  which 
approach  the  mind  most  naturally  seizes  the 
conjunction,  whether  by  advancing  from  the 
transient  and  special,  with  only  covert  and 
occasional  reference  to  the  eternal,  or  by 
moving  in  the  opposite  direction.  My  own 
impression  is  that  the  primary  emphasis  is 
most  safely  laid  on  the  given  facts  of  time 
and  space.  "  First  that  which  is  natural,  then 
that  which  is  spiritual." 

But,  without  regard  to  philosophic  analysis, 
I  suppose  all  will  agree  that  large  considera- 
tions are  apt  to  be  vague.    When  we  lose  our- 


186  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

selves  in  the  thought  of  God,  we  often  find 
that  we  have  indeed  lost  ourselves,  that  we 
have  become  insensitive  to  the  world  we  in- 
habit and  are  in  danger  of  becoming  obliv- 
ious to  its  duties.  When  full  of  the  thought 
of  God,  it  is  not  impossible  to  allow  a  room 
to  go  dusty,  a  neighbor  to  be  hungry,  a  bill 
to  remain  unpaid.  Not  impossible?  It  is  dan- 
gerously natural.  We  shall  be  wise  to  warn 
ourselves,  when  thoughts  of  God  are  so  dear 
and  uplifting,  that  we  must  watch  the  little 
world  which  lies  around  us  and  not,  because 
of  devoutness,  neglect  to  hear  its  needy  calls. 
These  are  cautions  which  the  reHgious  man 
of  every  age  has  found  it  sadly  necessary  to 
give  himself.  When  he  has  failed  to  hear 
them,  he  has  run  into  mysticism  and  many 
forms  of  similarly  useless  rapture,  —  God  has 
been  divorced  from  reality;  whereas,  when  we 
begin  with  the  vivid  and  pressing  little  duties 
close  at  hand,  — though  here  too  is  danger  of 
absorption,  —  there  is  a  steady  soUcitation  to 
view  their  broader  connections,  and  thus  to 
pass  on  to  him  who  is  the  basis  of  all.  "  He 
who  hath  not  loved  his  brother  whom  he  hath 
seen,  how  can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath 
not  seen?"     That  was  the  thought  of  the 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  187 

beloved  disciple  in  regard  to  this  puzzling 
matter.  Obviously  he  was  stating  just  what 
I  am  trying  to  state,  that  we  must  make  our 
start  with  the  given  world  around  us  —  that 
morality,  in  short,  precedes  religion.  But 
even  in  this  initial  morahty  I  do  not  under- 
stand that  we  are  discharged  from  religion. 
The  religious  sense  is  still  the  light  of  all  our 
seeing.  We  may  recognize  the  smallest  acts 
that  we  perform  as  those  which  infinite  intel- 
ligence would  call  for  at  this  particular  time. 
When  seeking  to  embody  righteousness  in 
petty  acts,  we  justly  regard  ourselves  as 
representing  God  under  finite  conditions. 
Morality  fulfills  itself  in  religion,  even  though 
its  gaze  is  directed  manward  rather  than  God- 
ward. 

V 

Now  that  we  have  reached  the  conclusion 
of  our  long  argument  and  shown  with  what 
peculiar  intimacy  religion  and  morality  are 
alHed,  —  an  intimacy  far  closer  than  has  ex- 
isted in  any  other  field,  —  it  may  be  well  to 
pause  and  compare  our  results  with  those  ob- 
tained by  other  inquirers.  There  are  three 
striking  definitions  of  religion  which  have 
deeply  influenced  men  at  different  times  dur- 


188  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

ing  the  last  hundred  years.  I  can  best  jus- 
tify my  own  statement  by  showing  that  it  is 
really  involved  in  all  these. 

Kant  defined  religion  as  morality  viewed 
as  divine  command.  He  thus  distinguishes 
the  two  fields,  but  regards  their  substance  as 
the  same.  Righteousness  is  their  common 
matter.  Only,  the  moment  we  conceive  of 
our  duties  as  ordered  by  God,  and  ourselves 
as  his  agents  set  to  an  appointed  task,  duty 
takes  on  a  new  color,  and  one  so  distinct  that 
the  new  type  of  life  deserves  a  new  name. 
When  an  upright  act  is  done  not  for  our  own 
benefit  or  because  we  incline  to  do  it,  not  be- 
cause it  is  usual  or  is  dictated  by  our  fellow 
men,  but  because  we  have  heard  in  it  the 
command  of  God,  then  we  are  religious  men. 
This  is  what  I  too  have  said  —  that  the  same 
act  might  be  regarded  in  a  finite  or  in  an  in- 
finite way,  as  concerned  with  events  of  time 
and  space,  or  with  these  as  merely  representa- 
tive of  an  eternal  order.  Kant's  statement 
would  accordingly  be  altogether  satisfactory 
to  me. 

Shortly  after  the  time  of  Kant,  Schleier- 
macher  proposed  another  notable  definition. 
It  is  one  which  has  traveled  far,  and  widely 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  189 

affected  theological  speculation.  It  is  that 
religion  is  rooted  in  the  sense  of  dependence, 
it  is  the  AhhangigkeitsgefuJd.  I  had  this 
in  mind  in  saying  that  we  should  never  have 
known  God  if  we  had  not  found  ourselves 
weak.  The  recognition  of  ourselves  as  in- 
sufficient for  our  needs,  the  longing  to  have 
our  imperfections  rounded  out  by  conjunction 
with  that  which  is  adequate,  gives  the  occa- 
sion for  God.  We  may  call  this  adequacy 
the  world,  nature,  society,  infinite  personality, 
God  —  phrase  it  how  we  will,  we  are  always 
compelled  to  recognize  a  universal  being  as 
the  supplementation  of  ourselves.  When  we 
have  perceived  how  helpless  and  meaningless 
we  are  apart  from  such  support,  we  have 
come  into  the  presence  of  some  kind  of  God. 
Morality  is  transformed  into  religion. 

Yet  these  two  definitions,  framed  by  men 
who  were  philosophers  by  profession,  are  per- 
haps a  little  scholastic.  One  has  been  offered 
more  recently  which  has  found  larger  popular 
favor.  Matthew  Arnold  says  that  "  religion 
is  moraHty  touched  with  emotion."  Arnold 
is  a  master  of  ambiguity,  and  this  definition 
does  not  lack  that  mark  of  all  his  great 
utterances.     No  word  in  it  is  clear.     Which 


190  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

emotion  is  intended?  The  emotion  of  fear, 
of  rage,  of  self-sacrifice  ?  We  are  not  told. 
What  is  meant  by  "  touched "  ?  It  is  un- 
certain. And  of  course  morality  goes  unex- 
plained. That  is,  there  is  no  word  in  the 
whole  phrase  which  is  shut  up  to  one  precise 
meaning. 

I  do  not  call  attention  to  this  peculiarity  of 
Arnold's  style,  whether  in  this  or  in  other  of  his 
famous  phrases,  for  purposes  of  disparagement 
or  to  suggest  that  his  definition  is  of  any  less 
worth  on  account  of  its  ambiguous  nature. 
On  the  contrary,  I  believe  it  will  be  found 
that  the  phrases  which  have  deeply  stirred 
mankind  have  usually  had  a  noble  ambiguity 
about  them.  They  are  not  neat  packages  of 
exact  meaning,  but  words  thrown  out  in  some 
direction  which  men's  minds  were  already  in- 
cHned  to  explore.  For  something  like  five 
hundred  years  the  Stoic  maxim  helpfully 
summoned  men  to  "  live  according  to  nature." 
But  no  man  was  ever  able  to  say  what  was 
meant  by  nature,  or  what  living  according  to 
it  was.  That  was  what  made  the  saying  a 
glorious  cry.  A  similar  cry  at  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century  set  the  world  on  fire, — 
"Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity."     But  what 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  191 

do  the  words  mean?  How  compatible,  in- 
deed, are  they  with  one  another  ?  Is  it  possi- 
ble to  have  brotherhood  where  men  are  exactly 
equal  to  one  another  and  each  is  altogether 
free?  Such  questions  never  interfered  with 
the  currency  of  the  cry.  To  be  a  world- 
mover,  a  phrase  must  pass  beyond  clear  con- 
sciousness and  appeal  in  part  to  the  uncon- 
scious sides  of  us.  It  must  venture  into  the 
unknown,  and  while  stimulating  thought 
through  suggestion  must  fix  no  bounds  to 
its  significance.  Something  of  this  sort  char- 
acterizes Arnold's  definition.  It  is  framed 
for  practical,  not  scientific  purposes;  and  I 
have  no  right  to  render  its  meaning  rigid. 
But  admitting  its  proper  vagueness,  I  cannot 
think  it  out  of  accord  with  the  conclusions 
here  reached.  Probably  the  emotion  which 
Arnold  had  in  mind  is  chiefly  the  emotion 
of  love.  Now  I  have  pointed  out  how,  when 
religion  reaches  its  height,  the  sense  of  alien 
relation  which  is  the  basis  of  fear  passes 
away,  and  we  see  in  the  being  whom  we  wor- 
ship the  fulfillment  of  ourselves.  When  mo- 
rality, the  search  after  uprightness  of  life,  is 
affected  by  love,  or  allegiance  to  another  who 
is  still  identified  with  ourselves,  there  comes 


192  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

a  new  character  into  it.  Instead  of  a  life  of 
drudgery,  we  lead  a  life  of  exaltation.  Some 
such  thought  seems  expressed  in  Arnold's 
shining  phrase.  And  if  so,  it  is  only  a  con- 
densed and  picturesque  expression  of  that 
which  I  have  endeavored  to  explain.  Into 
Arnold's  definition,  too,  as  into  my  own,  have 
entered  by  no  means  all  of  the  elements  of 
religion.  We  have  both  sought  to  point  out 
only  those  factors  which  contrast  religion  with 
morality. 

But  I  will  not  conclude  this  investigation 
with  negative  statements.  It  has  been  neces- 
sary to  show  how  unlike  is  the  point  of  view 
of  ethics  to  that  of  religion.  I  have  said 
that  as  students  of  ethics  we  must  bring  our- 
selves—  though  confessedly  with  difficulty — 
to  withdraw  our  attention  temporarily  from 
religion.  But  though,  as  I  have  rightly  urged, 
we  must  fix  our  moral  mind  on  the  manward 
rather  than  on  the  godward  side  of  a  life 
which  unites  finite  and  infinite,  I  ought  not 
to  leave  the  subject  without  pointing  out  with 
some  precision  the  debts  which  ethics  owes  to 
religion.  These  debts  are  too  considerable  for 
me  to  mark  out  in  detail.  I  will  confine  what 
I  have  to  say  to  three  forms  of  them. 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  193 

VI 

In  the  first  place,  morality  gains  through 
religion  a  wider  horizon.  Among  the  many- 
forbidding  aspects  of  the  moral  life  is  its  pet- 
tiness. A  while  ago  I  spoke  of  the  little  duty 
of  keeping  my  room  and  myself  clean.  But 
when  these  are  set  in  order,  they  remain  so 
but  an  hour  or  more,  and  then  must  be  at- 
tended to  again.  To  these  small  and  insistent 
demands  there  is  no  end.  How  dismal  must 
be  the  life  of  the  dutiful  housewife  who  gets 
three  meals  a  day  only  to  see  them  succes- 
sively disappear,  and  to  hear  a  call  for  three 
more  to-morrow.  Now  these  are  fair  exam- 
ples of  duty  everywhere.  In  triviahties  like 
these  we  see  the  endless  succession  of  duties 
better,  perhaps,  than  in  matters  which  we 
count  of  larger  consequence.  And  yet,  of 
how  small  consequence  the  greatest  are !  Af- 
ter struggling  and  denying  ourselves  in  order 
to  do  just  the  right  thing,  there  comes  the 
depressing  query  whether  if  we  had  done 
otherwise,  it  would  not  have  been  pretty  much 
the  same  a  hundred  years  hence  ?  What  is  it 
all  worth  ?  It  is  a  little  matter.  I  do  not 
count;  this   duty  does   not  count;  nothing 


194  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

counts.  Everything  in  the  world  is  shut  up 
to  some  single  time,  or  place,  or  person,  and 
all  alike  are  clamorous  for  care.  Such  things 
render  the  moral  life  dreary.  Its  petty  round 
of  duties  eats  us  up. 

From  this  depression  there  is  only  one  es- 
cape. We  may  see  in  the  little  the  large, 
may  look  through  the  finite  limited  duty  into 
the  friendly  face  of  the  eternal.  We  may 
perceive  ourselves  to  be  God's  agents,  and 
know  that  the  small  task  we  are  undertaking 
he  has  trustfully  committed  to  us,  bringing 
under  our  special  guardianship  that  particular 
portion  of  his  work.  So  we  gain  horizon. 
It  is  the  narrow  look,  with  our  gaze  confined 
to  the  single  task,  which  tires.  Sending  our 
eye  through  that  task  and  viewing  each  par- 
ticular duty  as  but  a  single  feature  of  the 
great  kingdom  of  God,  we  acquire  the  dignity 
of  citizens  in  that  kingdom.  Dreariness  is  at 
an  end. 

"  Who  sweeps  a  room  as  to  Thy  laws 
Makes  that  and  the  action  fine." 

So  it  does.  Sweeping  a  room  is  drudgery. 
But  sweeping  it  in  order  that  God's  way  of 
living  may  be  manifested,  is  quite  g,nother 
thing.     That  was  an  admirable  retort  which 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  195 

Theodore  Parker,  I  believe,  made,  when  some 
one  in  his  presence  spoke  of  "  mere  morahty." 
"  Mere  morality  ?  "  said  he.  "  We  might  as 
well  talk  of  mere  God."  Yes,  so  we  might, 
if  we  are  speaking  with  full  insight.  Yet, 
after  all,  morahty,  because  it  deals  with  the 
finite  side  of  affairs,  is  liable  to  become 
sundered  from  the  infinite,  and  then  it  is 
degraded.  The  disparaging  mere  accurately 
describes  this  condition  of  things.  What  we 
must  do  is  to  cast  off  the  mere.  And  the 
moment  we  do  this,  we  see  the  moral  fife  to 
be  the  life  of  God  on  earth. 

vn 

To  religion  ethics  owes  its  wide  horizon. 
But  a  second  great  debt  is  the  debt  of  sta- 
bility. Again  and  again  the  thought  must 
come  that  what  we  have  considered  righteous- 
ness may,  after  all,  be  nothing  but  conform- 
ity to  arbitrary  social  custom.  Society  has 
agreed  on  a  thousand  practices.  As  well 
might  it  have  agreed  on  others.  Practices 
to-day  sanctioned,  to-morrow  may  be  changed. 
And  may  it  not  be  that  every  seeming  moral 
duty  is  but  a  piece  of  conventionality,  with 
no  root,  fixed  only  in  the  varying  fancies  of 


196  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

men  ?  And  if  this  is  the  ca§e,  how  disheart- 
ening !  Why  sacrifice  our  brief  lives  to  main- 
tain conventionaHties  ?  Desires  are  real,  pas- 
sions unconventional.  Why  not  cast  ofE  arti- 
ficial restraints  and  be  rid  of  the  strictness 
of  duty  ?  There  is  only  one  thing  that  can 
give  steadiness  at  such  times,  and  that  is  to 
recognize  a  distinction  between  the  variable 
conventionaHties  of  life  and  eternal  morality. 
What  Cudworth  called  "  true  and  immutable 
morality,"  grounded  in  the  being  of  God  and 
believed  to  be  a  manifestation  of  his  nature, 
can  make  conduct  cheerfully  firm,  even  when 
it  is  at  issue  with  personal  advantage. 

The  supporting  authority  which  moraHty 
gains,  when  thus  set  in  contrast  with  man's 
wayward  desires,  has  been  given  majestic  ex- 
pression by  Sophocles,  in  his  "  Antigone." 
King  Creon  has  issued  an  edict  that  under 
penalty  of  death  no  one  shall  bury  the  traitor 
Etrocles,  who  has  fallen  in  an  attack  on  his 
native  city,  Thebes.  But  are  there  not  fixed 
duties  to  the  dead,  especially  to  dead  kins- 
men, duties  which  no  royal  edict  can  alter  ? 
Antigone  believes  there  are,  and  buries  the 
body  of  her  brother.  She  is  seized  and 
brought  before  the  king,  and  the  following 
conversation  occurs  :  — 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  19T 

Creon,  You  there,  now  turning  to  the 
ground  your  face,  do  you  acknowledge  or 
deny  you  did  this  thing? 

Antigone.  I  say  I  did  it.  I  deny  not  that 
I  did. 

Creon.  Tell  me,  not  at  full  length  but 
briefly,  did  you  know  my  edict  against  doing 
this? 

Antigone.  I  did.  How  could  I  help  it? 
It  was  plain. 

Creon.  Yet  you  presumed  to  transgress 
laws? 

Antigone.  Yes,  for  it  was  not  Zeus  who 
gave  this  edict ;  nor  yet  did  Justice,  dwelling 
with  the  gods  below,  make  for  men  laws  like 
these.  I  did  not  think  such  force  was  in  your 
edicts  that  the  unwritten  and  unchanging 
laws  of  God  you,  a  mere  man,  could  traverse. 
These  are  not  matters  of  to-day  or  yesterday, 
but  are  from  everlasting.  No  man  can  tell 
at  what  time  they  arose.  In  view  of  them 
I  would  not,  through  fear  of  human  will, 
meet  judgment  from  the  gods.  That  I  shall 
die,  I  know,  —  how  fail  to  know  it  ?  — 
though  you  had  never  made  an  edict.  And 
if  before  my  time  I  die,  I  count  it  gain.  For 
he  who  lives  like  me  in  many  woes,  how  can 


198  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

he  fail  to  find  in  death  a  gain  ?  So  then  for 
me  to  meet  this  doom  is  not  a  grief  at  all. 
But  when  my  mother's  child  had  died,  if  I 
had  left  his  corpse  unburied,  then  I  should 
have  grieved.  For  this  I  do  not  grieve. 
And  if  I  seem  to  you  to  have  been  working 
folly,  it  may  be  he  who  charges  folly  is  the 
fool. 

Neither  can  understand  the  other.  To 
Creon,  duty  is  a  matter  of  human  enactment, 
voluntarily  imposed  and  accepted.  To  An- 
tigone, it  is  a  divine  law,  imparting  steadiness 
to  earthly  vicissitudes.  But  beHefs  like  hers 
have  such  large  social  consequence  that  many 
legislators,  whose  interest  has  lain  simply  in 
maintaining  human  institutions,  have  declared 
that  if  the  rehgious  sanctions  should  become 
generally  distrusted,  customary  conventional 
moraHty  would  be  found  an  unstable  affair. 

vin 

A  third  great  advantage  possessed  by  the 
religious  man  is  hope.  The  world  presents 
serious  discouragements  to  right  doing.  The 
wicked  flourish,  the  righteous  are  oppressed. 
Every  age  has  recorded  its  cry  of  disappoint- 


ETHICS  AND  BELIGION  199 

ment  over  the  ineffectiveness  of  goodness. 
We  seem  continually  to  be  striving  against 
the  structure  of  things,  trying  to  force  good- 
ness upon  a  world  organized  adversely  or  in- 
differently. A  sense  of  helplessness  falls 
on  us  when  we  see  how  subtle  and  strong  are 
the  obstacles  besetting  the  good  man's  way. 
From  such  discouragements — whether  rightly 
or  wrongly  I  do  not  say  —  the  rehgious  man 
is  free.  In  his  view  God  is  at  the  heart  of 
things.  The  world  is  not  chaotic.  It  has 
aim,  an  aim  akin  to  what  we  mean  by  pro- 
gress, growth,  the  triumph  of  righteousness. 
We  may  not  always  be  able  to  discern  this. 
The  goodness  I  toilsomely  perform  may  seem 
to  be  lost.  But  the  make  of  the  world  and 
its  maker  are  in  every  case  of  moral  aspira- 
tion on  my  side.  What,  then,  can  man  do 
to  me?  The  rehgious  man  is  accordingly 
fundamentally  an  optimist,  with  exceptional 
assurance  and  ease  in  upright  conduct.  He 
has  great  allies. 

Kant  insists  that  nobody  can  act  morally 
without  assuming  that  the  constitution  of 
the  world  furnishes  a  field  adapted  to  moral 
action,  and  he  holds  that  this  necessary  as- 
sumption is  practical   behef   in  an  adapting 


200  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

God.  The  religious  man  differs  from  others 
in  the  clarity  with  which  he  makes  this  as- 
sumption. A  higher  degree  of  steadfast  ex- 
actitude in  righteousness  is  therefore  rightly 
expected  from  him  than  from  those  who  lack 
his  exalted  hope.  The  religious  man  often 
sins.  But  the  fact  that  when  he  does  so  the 
public  mockingly  laughs,  treats  his  misdeeds 
as  doubly  base,  and  counts  him  more  at  issue 
with  himseK  in  wrong-doing  than  others  are, 
shows  the  general  belief  that  in  the  hopes  of 
religion  motives  for  righteousness  are  to  be 
found  which  cannot  be  expected  elsewhere. 

I  have  nothing  to  do  with  demonstrating 
religion.  I  take  it  for  granted,  as  I  do  aes- 
thetics, the  law,  or  the  descriptive  sciences. 
Even  more  than  they  it  is  an  indestructible 
factor  of  human  life.  To  it  I  turn,  as  to  other 
accredited  fields,  merely  to  ascertain  what  are 
its  relations  to  ethics,  and  thus  to  learn  how 
far  ethics  is  a  dependent  science.  Plainly  it  is 
dependent  in  a  high  degree.  By  itself  ethics 
is  imperfect,  and  needs,  in  order  to  become  an 
effective  engine  in  life,  large  supplementation 
from  religion.  In  rehgion,  morality  cannot 
without  danger  be  merged.  A  sort  of  inde- 
pendent interest  in  the  things  of  time  and 


ETHICS  AND  RELIGION  201 

space  is  an  essential  preparation  for  any  true 
vision  of  the  things  of  eternity.  Ethics, 
studying  the  means  by  which  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  may  come  upon  earth,  is  necessarily 
occupied  with  earthly  conditions.  The  finite 
is  its  field ;  but  a  finite  which  never  lacks 
dignity,  because,  under  the  guidance  of  the 
majestic  word  "  ought,"  the  moral  man  is 
ever  seeking  to  manifest  the  connection  of 
the  finite  with  the  infinite. 


REFERENCES    ON   THE   RELATIONS    OF   RELI- 
GION  AND    ETHICS 

Kant,  Practical  Reason,  bk.  ii.  ch,  ii.  §  5. 

Caird's  Evolution  of  Religion,  ch.  ix. 

Martineau's  Study  of  Religion,  Introd. 

Stephen's  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity,  pp.  xxvi  and 

310. 
Royce's  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  ch.  xii. 
Bradley's  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  438. 
Watson's  Christianity  and  Idealism,  chs.  i.  and  viii. 
Baldwin's  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  ch.  viii.  §  5. 
Santayana's  Poetry  and  Religion,  ch.  L 
Wundt's  Facts  of  the  Moral  Life,  ch.  IL 
Fiske'a  Through  Nature  to  God. 


VI 
CONCLUSION 


VI 


CONCLUSION  * 
I 

Such  seem  to  me  to  be  the  intimate  alli- 
ances and  the  subtle  divergencies  of  ethics 
and  religion.  Conduct  and  character  every- 
where exhibit  finite  and  infinite  conditions. 
Devotion  to  the  infinite  conditions  is  ex- 
pressed in  religion  ;  devotion  to  the  finite,  in 
ethics.  But  when  this  has  been  shown,  have 
we  not  identified  ethics  with  common  life? 
Life  is  engagement  with  the  finite,  the  re- 
action of  that  mysterious  and  familiar  being, 
a  person,  upon  the  events  of  time  and  space. 
How  can  we  form  a  special  science  of  that 
which  enters  into  everything?  And  what 
right  has  any  man  to  call  himself  an  ethical 
philosopher  when  that  with  which  he  is  con- 
cerned is  as  familiar  to  all  other  men  as  to 

1  For  the  convenience  of  the  reader,  the  chapters  of  this 
book  are  not  divided  precisely  as  were  the  original  six  lec- 
tures. 


206  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

himself  ?  The  answer  to  these  questions  and 
the  consequent  distinction  of  ethics  from 
common  life  can  best  be  given  by  defining 
two  terms. 

Again  and  again  in  the  course  of  these 
lectures  I  have  employed  the  words  ethics  and 
morals  in  a  way  which  I  dare  say  has  made 
them  appear  interchangeable.  But  they  can- 
not be  interchanged.  Though  both  referring 
to  conduct,  and  to  conduct  which  should  con- 
form to  a  standard,  each  has  its  distinctive 
meaning.  If  I  object  to  a  man's  morals,  I 
assert  that  he  is  in  the  habit  of  performing 
acts  which  the  majority  of  his  fellow  men 
disapprove.  I  dechne  to  associate  with  him 
on  account  of  deeds  done  and  states  of  feel- 
ing permitted  which  I  believe  corrupt.  But 
if  I  object  to  his  ethics,  I  do  not  suggest  that 
he  has  ever  wrought  iniquity.  I  may  con- 
sider his  conduct  more  righteous  than  my 
own.  What  I  object  to  is  his  explanation  of 
conduct.  My  understanding  of  righteousness 
is  different  from  his.  I  believe  it  to  spring 
from  other  principles  than  those  to  which  he 
traces  it.  Ethics,  in  short,  is  a  science ;  mo- 
rality, an  art.  The  one  is  concerned  with 
systematic   comprehension   and  formulation^ 


CONCLUSION  207 

the  other  with  individual  performance.  To 
morality,  ethics  is  related  as  geometry  to  car- 
pentry. The  carpenter  embodies  the  princi- 
ples of  geometry,  but  he  may  do  so  bhndly, 
knowing  nothing  about  them.  The  geometer, 
who  takes  his  principles  from  objects  of  the 
outer  world,  may  have  no  skill  in  fashioning 
such  objects.  Each  of  the  two  has  his  honor- 
able work.  The  one  creates,  the  other  reveals. 
A  like  difference  obtains  between  the  ethical 
philosopher  and  the  moral  man.  Both  are 
concerned  with  the  same  facts,  but  they  treat 
them  in  different  ways.  When  we  perform 
moral  actions  in  common  life,  we  do  not 
thereby  become  ethical  philosophers.  For 
purposes  of  action,  it  is  not  necessary  to  com- 
prehend the  principles  involved  in  the  deeds 
we  do.  Of  such  principles,  we  may  merely 
catch  glimpses,  as  our  fragmentary  acts  fall 
from  us.  Instincts  repeatedly  guide  us,  cus- 
toms, imitation  of  those  around,  or  even  the 
pressure  of  circumstance.  Our  conduct  does 
not  usually  express  the  results  of  broad  sur- 
vey, full  consciousness,  deliberate  approval. 
This  full  and  coherent  consciousness  of  what 
conduct  and  character  signify  it  is  the  office 
of  ethics  to  bring,  about.     The  ethical  student 


208  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

tries  to  formulate  systematically  those  shap- 
ing ideals  which  may  give  consistent  unity  to 
wealthy  lives.  Persons,  however  finite,  are 
regarded  by  him  as  capable  of  becoming  con- 
scious wholes,  and  he  seeks  to  learn  the  laws 
which  may  permeate  them  in  their  entirety. 
The  ethical  man  accordingly  analyzes  what 
the  moral  man  half  blindly  lives. 

When  in  these  lectures  I  have  wished  to 
direct  attention  to  good  deeds,  I  have  used  the 
word  "  moral."  But  our  general  discussion 
has  had  reference  to  ethics ;  i.  e.,  we  have  been 
engaged  in  examining  how  far  the  intelligible 
principles  involved  in  good  conduct  might  be 
discriminated  from  those  found  in  the  neigh- 
boring fields.  It  is  true  that  in  dealing  with 
religion  —  predominantly  an  affair  of  practice 
—  I  have  often  found  myself  obliged  to  con- 
trast with  it  morahty  rather  than  ethics.  But 
I  believe  it  will  be  found  that  the  distinc- 
tive meaning  of  the  two  terms  has  been  pre- 
served, and  that,  on  the  whole,  these  lectures 
have  been  ethical,  not  moral.  I  have  not  set 
before  myself  the  colossal  task  of  making  my 
hearers  better.  I  have  had  the  humbler  aim 
of  the  teacher,  to  lead  those  who  hear  to  a 
clearer  conception  of  what  being  a  good  man 


CONCLUSION  209 

is.  Even  this  conception  I  have  traced  only 
so  far  as  its  outlines  could  be  seen  detaching 
themselves  from  other  nearly  allied  sciences. 
Content  with  discovering  what  sort  of  being 
is  capable  of  conduct,  I  have  not  attempted  to 
formulate  or  codify  its  laws.  Problems  of  this 
sort  form  the  matter  of  a  treatise  on  ethics  to 
which  these  lectures  are  but  an  introduction. 

II 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  deepen  our 
preliminary  definition  of  ethics  and  to  answer 
compactly  the  question  with  which  we  set  out. 
What  sort  of  being  is  capable  of  conduct  and 
character ;  what  being,  therefore,  requires  the 
pecuhar  science  of  ethics  to  explain  him  ?  I 
present  the  answer  in  tabular  form.  Ethics 
deals  with  a  human  being  who  is  conceived  as 
unlike  the  being  of  — 


1.  Physics,  through  being  conscious 

2.  Philosophy,  through  being  active 

3.  History,  through  being  free 

4.  Law,  through  possessing  subjective  worth 

5.  Esthetics,  through  possessing  objective 

worth 


6.  Religion,  through  being  finite  1    I 

7.  Common  Life,  through  being  coherent     J   |' 


03 


210  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

A  little  explanation  will  make  the  table 
clear,  and  define  a  few  of  the  fundamental 
terms  of  ethics.  The  word  "  spirit,"  even  in 
its  lowest  uses,  signifies  something  that  acts ; 
and  when  acting,  is  moved  of  itself  and  from 
within.  Its  opposite  is  matter,  something  pas- 
sive and  inert.  When  we  inspirit  a  man,  we 
give  him  fife  and  power  of  action.  When 
we  say  an  animal  is  spirited  or  spiritless,  we 
mean  that  he  either  has  or  has  not  vital  ac- 
tivity. The  same  thought  is  in  our  minds 
when  we  call  a  liquor  which  comes  from  fer- 
mentation "  spirits,"  or  when  we  talk  of  "  the 
spirit  of  the  age,"  and  thus  indicate  what 
dominant  ideals  have  shaped  its  activity.  Eth- 
ics investigates  spiritual  laws,  the  laws  which 
guide  beings  conscious,  active,  and  free.  But 
ethics  deals  with  embodied  spirits  —  not  with 
pure  spirits,  or  activities  altogether  parted 
from  matter. 

Accordingly  a  moral  being  is  something 
more  than  a  spirit ;  and  when  this  word  is  ap- 
plied to  him,  it  suggests  a  kind  of  unreality. 
He  is  a  spirit  circumstanced  thus  and  so; 
that  is,  he  is  a  person.  Persona,  a  mask, 
indicates  that  he  who  wears  it  has  activities 
clearly  defined,  which  differentiate  him  from 


CONCLUSION  211 

other  spirits  and  give  him  a  worth  and  stand- 
ing of  his  own.  To  impersonate  is  to  put  on 
definite  spiritual  characteristics.  The  oppo- 
site of  person  is  thing ;  a  specially  constituted 
passive  object  is  contrasted  with  the  specially 
constituted  active  being.  Person  is  accord- 
ingly the  great  law  term;  for  the  law  can 
deal  with  spirits  only  when  they  are  thus  Hm- 
ited,  when  they  live  on  a  particular  street  at  a 
particular  number,  and  have  their  particular 
nature  defined  by  relation  to  others.  But 
though  the  law  undertakes  to  estimate  their 
worth  only  so  far  as  they  help  or  harm  others, 
it  assumes  that  aesthetically  and  morally  per- 
sons have  worth  in  themselves. 

A  person  thus  fully  particularized  is  single, 
individual.  He  is  a  being  cut  off,  contrasted 
with  society.  There  may  be  individual  things 
or  brutes,  as  weU  as  individual  persons.  But 
a  person  is  so  conceived  in  ethics  in  order  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  a  moral  being  must 
be  a  coherent  organic  whole,  who,  though  con- 
nected with  the  infinite,  is  busied  with  finite 
affairs.  Such  an  individual  spiritual  person 
can  really  be  known  only  internally  as  a  self. 
This  unique  knowledge  of  selfhood  we  carry 
over,  however,  by  analogy  and  attribute  it  in 


212  THE  FIELD  OF  ETHICS 

varying  degrees  to  all  who  show  some  simi- 
larity to  ourselves.  Primarily  ethics  is  a 
study  of  the  self.  Society  and  the  world  are 
considered  in  it  only  so  far  as  they  too  are 
implied  in  selfhood  and  are  the  appropriate 
field  for  its  activity. 

ni 
The  proper  place  for  definition  is  at  the 
end  of  one's  inquiries.  Having  offered  defini- 
tions of  some  of  the  important  terms  employed 
in  ethics,  I  am  tempted  to  set  down  some  of  the 
more  notable  definitions  of  the  science  itself. 
We  might  call  it  a  criticism  of  the  formation, 
maintenance,  and  comparative  worth  of  human 
customs.  We  might  say,  with  Sidgwick,  that 
it  is  the  study  of  what  ought  to  be,  as  far  as 
this  depends  upon  the  voluntary  action  of  in- 
dividuals. Or,  with  Alexander,  that  it  is  the 
answer  to  the  problem  of  reconciling  the  mani- 
fold likes  and  dislikes  of  many  persons.  Or, 
with  Paley,  that  it  is  the  science  which  teaches 
men  their  duty  and  the  reasons  of  it.  Or, 
with  Spencer,  that  it  describes  the  form 
which  universal  conduct  assumes  during  the 
last  steps  of  its  evolution.  Or,  with  Guyau, 
that  it  is  busied  with  the  means  of  preserving 


CONCLUSION  213 

and  enlarging  life,  life  material  or  intellectual. 
Or,  with  Lord  Bacon,  that  its  aim  is  so  to  com- 
pose the  passions  that  they  may  fight  on  the 
side  of  reason  and  not  invade  it.  And  all  these 
definitions,  with  their  wide  verbal  differences, 
will  be  found  to  intend  pretty  much  the  same 
thing.  Ethics  is  certainly  'the  study  of  how 
life  may  be  full  and  rich,  and  not,  as  is  often 
imagined,  how  it  may  be  restrained  and 
meagre.  Those  words  of  Jesus,  —  of  which 
PhilHps  Brooks  was  so  fond,  —  announcing 
that  he  had  come  in  order  that  men  might 
have  life  and  have  it  abundantly,  are  the 
clearest  statement  of  the  purposes  of  both 
morahty  and  religion,  of  righteousness  on 
earth  and  in  heaven. 


EUctroiyPed  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &•  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


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